grumbooks

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

2012-01-30T10:43:00.001Z

What can I say about this that has not already been said? (When did that ever stop me?) Save to say that, as always, I have trouble getting started. The first section of Part One always seems to me to be much longer than it really is. Perhaps an indication of the extreme compression involved in the writing. There is so much to take on board at the beginning of the work that It makes the rest seem daunting, when in fact when has once found one’s balance, so to speak, the rest flows like... well... thought.

The best part of the book as far as I am concerned is the short, middle section. Ten years in fifteen pages and the sense of change and decay in an otherwise unchanging universe are conveyed with all the intensity of a poem – a nocturne in which the bursts of light are not stars or comets, but the falling of shells and the shock of sudden death.

That it is, for me, the best part of the book does not detract from the context in which it sits. Rather it enhances the preceding and following sections, providing a different perspective on the scene; perhaps even the perspective of the scene itself – a meditation on how the places we live view the passing of time. A triumphant work.

A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh

2012-01-14T14:49:00.001Z

The first of Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn mysteries. As a book written partly to entertain herself and partly to see if she could do it, it is quite remarkable. Focussed, smooth, and well paced with an intriguing storyline, it is an excellent first attempt. In retrospect (I have read a number of her books before, including this, though never in order) it is clear this is a first book.

Characterization is sketchy and often so subtle (if at all there) as to make some characters indistinguishable from others, whilst others still are mere ciphers (e.g., the Russian sub-plot). The story is also a little light in places. But in the end, what we have a thoroughly diverting tale that does not rely on a gimmicky detective. It is clearly written without a word wasted, spiced with a dry wit, and full of all the indications that here was a writer who would become a queen of the genre.

Interim - Dorothy Richardson

2012-01-09T12:06:00.001Z

The fifth of Richardson’s Pilgrimage series and I can only say these are works of genius. Engaging, witty, written with great simplicity and still finding room to experiment with form and style. Miriam Henderson’s development is so subtly told, that you are carried along, unaware of much change until you glance back and read, again, the fragile uncertainty of the know-it-all teenager of the first book.

Whilst Miriam still struggles with some of her pre-occupations (especially that of adequately conveying her inner life to others – which must make these not only the first stream of consciousness novels, but amongst the first meta-narratives), she has matured. Still uncertain about much that goes on around her, she is independent and living a life that quietly questions many of the male-centred and dominated establishments of the day.

To have sustained such a detailed and endlessly fascinating psychological study of a single character with such style and maturity; to write so well and explore the way in which words can convey the inner life of a person; to conjure up a picture of society with all its quirks, prejudices, and possibilities; to chart the progress of new ways of thinking; and still not be feted alongside the likes of Woolf, Joyce, and other modernists, suggests to me that there is something sadly awry in the world of literature.

The Moment Of Eclipse - Brian Aldiss

2012-01-05T13:53:00.000Z

This collection of short stories from the latter half of the 1960s demonstrates both Aldiss’s craft and art as a writer. The stories are science fiction (in the broadest sense of the term – many of them demonstrating the exploration of inner space that exemplifies the so-called New Wave that centred around Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine), yet they are highly literate. The writing is polished and intelligent. It shares space with some of Ballard’s work.

Technically the stories explore language and form without being self-consciously ‘experimental’, particularly so in ‘Orgy Of The Living And The Dying’ which is reminiscent of his novel Report On Probability A. They treat the reader as an intelligent being capable of appreciating subtlety and the jumps in narrative. They are also imaginative, displaying both a social awareness and a dry wit.

A third of the book is taken up with three linked stories that explore (at different periods of time) the consequences of a virus that infects animals with immortality. Others explore the consequences of artificial intelligence (‘Super-Toys Last All Summer Long’ and ‘Working In The Spaceship Yards’), and others introduce meta-narratives where the boundaries between the creation and its creator are blurred or dissolved.

All in all a fascinating and entertaining collection with stories that stay in the mind, slowly evolving, long after the covers of the book are closed.

Also read in 2011

2011-12-30T21:00:00.001Z

The Man Who Knew Too Much – W Howard Baker
Swords Against Wizardry – Fritz Leiber
Artemis Fowl And The Atlantis Complex – Eoin Colfer
Enchanted Glass – Diana Wynne Jones
The Game – Diana Wynne Jones
Murder In The Sun – Jack Trevor Story
Down With Skool – Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
How To Be Topp – Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
Whizz For Atomms – Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
Back In The Jug Agane – Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
Terror Keep – Edgar Wallace
Unexpected Magic – Diana Wynne Jones
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream – Harlan Ellison
A History Of Monks House And Village Of Rodmell – Julie Singleton
Slaughtermatic – Steve Aylett
Between Fantoine and Agapa – Robert Pinget
The Empire Of A Thousand Planets – Mezieres & Christin
That Voice – Robert Pinget
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor – Mervyn Peake
The Old Man Dies – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Minister – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Young Girl – Georges Simenon
The Secret Kingdom – Jenny Nimmo
Maigret’s Little Joke – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Old Lady – Georges Simenon
Pure Dead Magic – Debi Gliori
Maigret And The Headless Corpse – Georges Simenon
Maigret’s First Case – Georges Simenon
Maigret Takes A Room – Georges Simenon
Maigret’s Failure – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Man On The Boulevard – Georges Simenon
The Others – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Loner – Georges Simenon
Pure Dead Wicked – Debi Gliori
Maigret’s Memoirs – Georges Simenon
Maigret In Society – Georges Simenon
Maigret Loses His Temper – Georges Simenon
The Window Over The Way – Georges Simenon
The Magic Drum – Emma Tennant
Maigret’s Pickpocket – Georges Simenon
Maigret And The Nahour Case – Georges Simenon
Maigret Stonewalled – Georges Simenon
The White Cottage Mystery – Margery Allingham
The Crime At Black Dudley – Margery Allingham
Mystery Mile – Margery Allingham
Look To The Lady – Margery Allingham
Police At The Funeral – Margery Allingham
Sweet Danger – Margery Allingham
Death Of A Ghost – Margery Allingham
Flowers For The Judge – Margery Allingham
Maigret And The Hundred Gibbets – Georges Simenon
Dancers In Mourning – Margery Allingham
The Case Of The Late Pig – Margery Allingham
The Fashion In Shrouds – Margery Allingham
Lock 14 – Georges Simenon
A Crime In Holland – Georges Simenon
Mr Campion And Others – Margery Allingham
A Face For A Clue – Georges Simenon
Traitor’s Purse – Margery Allingham
Coroner’s Pidgin – Margery Allingham
More Work For The Undertaker – Margery Allingham
The Tiger In The Smoke – Margery Allingham
The Beckoning Lady – Margery Allingham
Hide My Eyes – Margery Allingham
The China Governess – Margery Allingham
The Mind Readers – Margery Allingham
Cargo Of Eagles – Margery Allingham
Mr Campion’s Farthing – Youngman Carter
Mr Campion’s Falcon – Youngman Carter
Maigret And The Enigmatic Lett – Georges Simenon
A Battle Of Nerves – Georges Simenon
Maigret Takes The Waters – Georges Simenon
The Friend Of Madame Maigret – Georges Simenon
Maigret In Court – Georges Simenon
Maigret’s Boyhood Friend – Georges Simenon
Maigret At The Crossroads – Georges Simenon
The Sailors’ Rendezvous – Georges Simenon
At The ‘Gai-Moulin’ – Georges Simenon
The Galton Case – Ross Macdonald
Maigret And The Tavern By The Seine – Georges Simenon
The Wycherly Woman – Ross Macdonald
Maigret And The Wine Merchant – Georges Simenon
The 50s & 60s The Best Of Times – Alison Pressley
My Friend Maigret – Georges Simenon
The Zebra-Striped Hearse – Ross Macdonald
The Chill – Ross Macdonald
The Far Side Of The Dollar – Ross Macdonald
Faustine – Emma Tennant
Black Money – Ross Macdonald
Backwater – Dorothy Richardson
334 – Thomas M. Disch
Honeycomb – Dorothy Richardson
The Instant Enemy – Ross Macdonald
Pure Dead Brilliant – Debi Gliori
The Goodbye Look – Ross Macdonald
The Lion Of Boaz-Jachin And Jachin-Boaz – Russell Hoban
The Tunnel – Dorothy Richardson
The Mathematics Of Magic – L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt

A grand total of 139 books read during the year.

Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin (tr Jamey Gambrell)

2011-12-13T10:57:00.001Z

It is unusual for me to give up on a book. It has to be very badly written or exceedingly dull. This was both. I know it is not the translation as Gambrell has proven her ability to move a work from one language to another with a great deal of skill and sensitivity to the original. But there’s not much you can do when the original is as bad as this.

All of which has left me wondering. Sorokin is, apparently, highly regarded. He has won literary prizes. Surely it is my judgement that is in error. Or not. Literary prizes, in my opinion, often go to undeserving but safe work. In Sorokin’s case, it has probably gone to someone who put their head a little way above the parapet and got lots of attention for it. It certainly hasn’t gone to them (on this evidence) for their ability to write.

I got part way through the the first book, Bro. It is plodding, dull, almost adolescent in its repetitiveness and peppering of the text with randomly italicised and capitalised WORDS, and by half way I had given up caring about the characters or their story. The potential was there for a story that could have turned the entire history of the Soviet Union inside out, but Sorokin has given no thought to structure or style (or if he did, he made the wrong choice) and ruined his opportunity in a story so dull I literally fell asleep part way through a chapter.

One for the charity shop.

Baga - Robert Pinget

2011-11-24T10:30:00.000Z

A gentle and surreal fairy tale of a king and his first minister (Baga), written with humour and affection. This makes it seem a lightweight piece of writing, but on the contrary it manages to explore some deep themes; it simply does this without ever taking itself too seriously.

As a piece of social commentary, it is still relevant today (if not more than when it was written. Notions of sovereignty, war, and how those of us who just want a quiet life are forever thwarted by the psychopaths who want to dominate and cause misery are all prodded with a stick perfectly designed for the purpose.

If you have never read any Pinget before, this is perhaps a good place to start.

Pointed Roofs - Dorothy Richardson

2011-11-20T11:41:00.001Z

Before Joyce and Woolf, there was Dorothy Richardson, the writer whose work was the first expression of what was to be called ‘stream of consciousness’. And as first expressions go, it appeared pretty much complete and fully developed. For someone who was redefining the English novel (despite her experience of journalism), this is something to be celebrated. Sadly all the credit these days seems to go to Joyce and (often grudgingly) to Woolf. Richardson seems to have been forgotten.

Pointed Roofs is the first of an eleven novel sequence which records in detail the life of Miriam Henderson, a mirror of Richardson herself. Expressing her experiences – personal, spiritual, and intellectual – through her inner voice, Richardson explores a whole new technique for the novel. She also presents the female consciousness with a new and genuine voice – one which clearly states that a woman’s experience of the world is interesting, every bit as valid as a man’s, and vital to an understanding of human experience.

With all this theoretical baggage, it might be expected that the novel is heavy and stilted. Far from it. Beautifully written, it runs as effortlessly as a great river. The surface appears serene, but there are deep currents. Miriam leaves her family to become an English teacher in a German school for young ladies. At the fragile age of eighteen it is an adventurous thing to do, but something she feels to be absolutely necessary – an essential part of her growth as a person.

The text captures all the certainty and bewilderment of an eighteen-year-old on their first time away from home. Certainty that she knows how the world should be and how she herself should be, bewilderment because there is simply so much she does not understand, including her own emotional responses. She is only in Germany for a few months, but she grows, begins to flower, and begins to understand.

Each of the episodes, even the most apparently minor incidents, is vividly portrayed. The misery and humiliation of having her hair washed by the housekeeper, the hysterical atmosphere during the thunderstorm, the frisson of young girls becoming young women in a school where talk of boys is frowned on. These might not seem like much on which to build a novel, but they are so authentically drawn, one can sense the intensity and importance to the individuals involved.

The Slynx - Tatyana Tolstaya (tr Jamey Gambrell)

2011-10-06T13:30:00.000+01:00

It is rare to find a book in which all the elements come together so perfectly. The simple design of the actual book. A cover that exactly matches the content and overall feel of the novel. A translation that captures the spirit of the original as well as being accurate. And at its core, a novel that actually lives up the praise from the TLS quoted on the rear cover: ‘A postmodern literary masterpiece.’

I’m not au fait enough with literary terminology to know whether the book is modernist, postmodernist, pre-postmodernist, or just old fashioned ‘written recently in a style best suited to the particular story to be told’. What I do know is that it has the power of myth, the charm of a fairy tale, the complexity and clarity of the best literature.

Set two hundred years after a catastrophe known as The Blast, this tells the tale of Benedikt who lives in an unnamed enclave. Free of mutations, he works as a clerk copying books and lives a simple life. His world, however, is far from simple. It is partly a land of fairytale, complete with monsters; partly a dystopian landscape where memories of life before The Blast are confusing echoes in a neo-medieval world.

Full of playful ambiguity, humour and beautifully drawn characters, this work dances. It is true that owes much to a Russian cultural landscape, but you do need to know anything about that to appreciate what is a sublime portrait of human existence. There are haunting scenes, simple and touching without ever being sentimental. It is a wonderful literary experience, not least because the language is beautiful. You don’t often find a work that explores such fundamental issues that is also an easy read. This is in part due to the superb translation, but mostly due to the style – a deceptively homely approach that is rich and inventive.

If you worry that the novel has become dull, is dying, dead, or otherwise irrelevant, try this.

The Little Saint - Georges Simenon

2011-09-17T09:59:00.000+01:00

“If I were allowed to keep only one of my novels, I would choose this one.” So said Simenon of The Little Saint. On the face of it a curious choice. It is not the grittiest, not the most complex, perhaps not even the best written of his works. Yet it is obvious from reading the work, it is imbued with affection.

There are two main characters here. The first is, of course, Louis. Illegitimate son a street seller, he is small, delicate and with an otherworldly nature that sits at odds with his squalid and often violent surroundings. He lives with his mother, siblings, and a succession of men, some of whom take an interest and most who do not.

The early years of this child are told with realism and without sentimentality. The squalid conditions, poverty, disease, and promiscuous sexual nature are not glossed over. Nor are they sensationalised. Simenon tells a complex, nuanced story, even if it is not, to begin with, apparent what the story might be.

The other major character is the small section of Paris in which Louis grows up. This world expands as he slowly explores and is pushed out into the world. It is drawn with as much skill and affection as the inhabitants and together we get a very real sense of life in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Yet it the double portrait is filtered through Louis’s own sensibilities. And Louis is no ordinary child. He does not engage with the world in the same way as those around him. Not only is he drawn very strongly to visual stimuli in order to make sense of the world, he is, to begin with, extremely passive.

As he grows, he finds expression through painting. And as we read, we discover this is in fact a biography of a famous artist’s childhood. The adult years are glossed over because the book deals with the formulation of the creative imagination and the first exercising of the skills that allow that imagination a voice.

As with all Simenon’s novels, he has much to say, but he never once preaches a message. Much like Louis, if asked about a subject, he would probably have been tempted to say, “I don’t know.” Rather, he presents a complex portrait and pays his readers the compliment of having the intelligence to read and take from the work what they will. For me it is a vivid picture of poverty, of the growth of creative imagination, of the ways in which some people see the world differently.

It may be that Simenon’s fondness for the book stems from his own incessant creative urge. In it he was able to touch something of what may have been within himself, whilst also taking the time to explore a world he knew and clearly cared for. And as always with Simenon, it well written, concise, powerful, and very French.

The Milkman In The Night - Andrey Kurkov

2011-09-14T16:34:00.000+01:00

Let’s get the gripes out of the way first. To begin with, the translation. Whilst it is no doubt technically correct, it is possibly the dullest and most literal translation I have come across in years. Kurkov has been poorly served and a lot of the subtlety of his earlier writing (and which you sense is still there) has been lost. Indeed, the better known he has become, the worse has become the production of his books. Which leads to the second gripe. Proof reading. Do big publishers just not bother these days? Is it given to a semi-literate intern? One who doesn’t even know how to use a spell check (because some of the typos would have been picked up by that). It makes the book look shoddy and cheap. Which leads to my final gripe. Kurkov needs an editor. His early books were sharply written. Now they are bloated. I have no objection to a book being long if that is needed to tell the story, but we don’t need to know (time after time) that someone turned left onto this street and right onto that street before cutting through this alley and across that square, with asides that could have been lifted from a joke version of a tourist information leaflet for Kiev. It makes for incredibly dull writing in itself and ruins what would otherwise be a perfect book.

Now I’ve got that off my chest, I can affirm that I still believe Kurkov to be a writer who is streets ahead (turn left down this one and right down that one before cutting into an alley and across a square – even all those streets) of contemporary mainstream literary British writers.

On the surface this might seem a superficial romance in which the lives of various characters living in and around Kiev are slowly woven together. Slowly is the operative word. Even had Kurkov been stricter with his editing, this is a book that proceeds at a leisurely, almost somnambulistic pace. And appropriately so. It is about everyday life and everyday folk and the wholly bizarre and often surreal everyday world in which they (and the rest of us) live.

The slow pace and quiet presentation of events are, as always with Kurkov, both disarming and deceiving. Because when you get to the end, you realise that a revolution has taken place. And along the way, the everyday concerns of everyday folk (which sounds a lot worse than it really is) have been examined, turned inside out, put right way back, and turned through one hundred and eighty degrees.

The many interweaving plots are to complex to relate, although they are not at all difficult to follow once you have remembered who is who. The overall effect is one of gentle comedy and great affection for the people and their country. Don’t expect another Penguin book. The surrealism is much more subtle. Do expect to be charmed and drawn in and, gripes notwithstanding, find yourself immersed in a fantasy every bit as compelling as the real life it reflects.

The Zero Train - Yuri Buida

2011-09-02T12:17:00.000+01:00

A lot of comparisons have been made to try to capture the essence of this short novel – Kafkaesque, Beckett with trains, you get the picture. And whilst these may be true to a degree, it is only a small degree. Buida has his own voice and his own approach. Indeed, like all good writers he has subverted everything without once straying from a path which anyone can follow. Most importantly, he has taken what many term Socialist Realism and used it to cast a blisteringly clear light on Stalinist Russia. That this would call to mind both Kafka and Beckett (and many more beside) is inevitable.

If that is his style, his subject is both simple and infinitely expressive, with a life beyond the episodic tale. A railway line is built along which travels the Zero Train. At intervals along the track there are stations and sidings, workshops, and all the life that is lived by those who maintain all these facilities. We are given glimpses into the long, bleak, and brutal life of one such place. It encapsulates the Stalinist era, but it also lays wide open the human condition. Those who arrive at the beginning, young, with hope, are ground down through the years. Those that survive are little more than that. Survivors. Their lives have been devoted to the Zero Train, the purpose of which is a mystery. When the train goes, they must go as well.

The whole book is a surreal tour de force. It sounds grim, and the realism spares no sensibilities, but at the same time it is a poetic work, and a paean to those whose whole lives were lived with the heel of the boot on their faces. Certainly a book worth seeking out.

Maigret Has Doubts - Georges Simenon

2011-08-05T16:54:00.000+01:00

The great thing about Maigret is that whilst they are crime novels, they are not just crime novels. Yes, they are about a policeman and they recount his cases in a quiet, existentialist way, but they are also about the world in which the crimes occur. From small to large, Simenon never loses the sense that we are witness to actual events.

This is amply illustrated in the book. It is about a murder and its investigation. Yet all the time, Maigret has doubts as to the guilt of the perpetrator, who himself proclaims his innocence. Yet events and the people involved conspire blindly in such a way that the probably innocent man is executed.

This happens not out of the crime, but out of the social attitudes of those on the fringe, the ones called upon to fill in background detail for the investigators. Their snobbery, their desire to keep their own secrets hidden, their desire not appear foolish, their inability to express themselves, all add up to the damnation of a man who hadn’t the strength to stand against the wind.

As such this is an exercise in subtle character study. In fact, it is a master class. Simenon doesn’t tax us. He writes entertaining books. But neither does he assume that entertain need be simplistic. Rather, he opens the real world to us in a way we might not otherwise see.

His books are generally short, but I would much rather have this essence of good writing and superb observation than the bloated, so-called psychological gore-fests that pass for some aspects of crime fiction today.

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century: 1969 - Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill

2011-08-03T09:17:00.000+01:00

I am reserving judgement on this latest outing of the League. I realise that Moore writes long story arcs and that you have to read the whole thing to appreciate the parts, but... Well, as I said, I’m reserving judgement on that. For this instalment, however, I have to say I was disappointed. The story is thin and the artwork lazy. I know O’Neill style is spars and sketchy, but there are panels in this book where it looked he couldn’t be arsed and the overall layout was, to be honest, dull.

On the plus side, for anyone who grew up in the ‘60s there is a great deal of fun to be had spotting the popular icons of the period in the background (and sometimes foreground) of the panels.

Jury out, until the series is complete, but for this instalment? I’ll give it three.

Nirvana Bites - Debi Alper

2011-08-01T12:24:00.000+01:00

It is difficult to write a comic novel that deals with serious issues. Debi Alper succeeds magnificently. This is because the comedy grows naturally from the characters and the situation.

At heart this is a thriller, with Jen, desperate for a job, drawn into finding out just who has it in for Stan. Stan is a BBC executive and spouse of a Tory MP. He also has a secret life. And someone is determined to expose that and cause as much pain along the way to anyway who tries to thwart them.

As such, this is about people who live on the fringe - those who choose to be there and those who have no choice; all trying their best to get by. But those on the fringes are often prey to the psychopaths and morally righteous (the ones who preach decency with a big stick in their hand).

But whilst this is a moral story, it is not a moralising story. This world is expertly explored through the medium of the story. We meet interesting and thoroughly believable characters along the way. And, something of a rarity these days, it is well written - lively, intelligent, emotionally engaging, well constructed, with a satisfying conclusion that nonetheless left me wanting more.

The Sunday Books - Mervyn Peake & Michael Moorcock

2011-07-13T10:07:00.000+01:00

Perhaps for completists, this is nonetheless a beautiful book containing a selection of the drawings and pictures that Mervyn Peake produced for his two sons while they were living on Sark. These are not finished drawings. They were done on Sundays (hence the title) with his sons sitting either side of him whilst he told stories and conjured fantastical worlds. Peake’s style is distinctive, and even in these quick works we see the start of the path that leads to his paintings and line drawings.

In this work, pirates abound along with fantastic creatures and the occasional cowboy. The stories that went with them were not written down, so the text has been provided by Michael Moorcock, a friend of the Peakes and long time supporter of Mervyn Peake’s work. An introduction puts the illustrations in their family context, and a suitably daffy story ties the selected pictures together into a narrative.

Moorcock has fun, with unobtrusive allusions to aspects of his own work and the wider world of comics and illustrated stories that were Peake’s own inspiration. And the reader of the book will also have fun, because these are pictures you can return to again and again. The line drawings are full of detail, the colour pictures are gloriously vivid, and evoke those childhood picture albums and annuals that I remember with great fondness.

If you can spare the cash, this is well worth it.

Mahu or The Material - Robert Pinget

2011-07-11T20:11:00.000+01:00

Back in the day (which was a very long way back) when I was trying to learn French (most of which I have now forgotten for lack of practice), I struggled through a Pinget in the original, text in one hand, a stack of French dictionaries close by the other. That experience, along with Beckett’s wonderful (if somewhat loose) translation of one of his plays, was enough to tell me that Pinget was an author I liked.

And now there are translations of all his works available for me to take the lazy option. I would much prefer to read these in the original as there is (along with Robbe-Grillet, Beckett, and others of that ilk) something about the French language that lends itself to such innovative writing.

Mahu is thoroughly, charmingly and, appropriately (given the Saint Fiducia episode), barking. It is a delight from start to finish. Proof (if proof were needed) that exploratory and innovative fiction can be humorous and fun (which aren’t necessarily one and the same thing). There is serious intent here. Not just an exploration of human relationships and the unique outlook of Mahu, but also a quirky examination of the nature of fiction as this novel is the novel of the central character. Yet the serious examination of these issues and ideas is all the better for its surreal daftness.

It is an aspect of the French I have long admired (and which had me seriously considering a move to Paris at one point) that work ranging from the profundity of a Camus, Sartre, or Pinget sits with equanimity in the same metaphorical pavement café as a Simenon or a Lucky Luke comic and is take with equal measures of seriousness and enjoyment. We had it in the UK for a while in the late 60s, but then literature (like everything else in this benighted land) was seen as a money spinning commodity; a world to be colonised by pompous no-nothings who churn out dull twaddle.

All I can say is, ‘Vive la différence.’

Wild Nights - Emma Tennant

2011-07-09T14:57:00.001+01:00

Occasionally you’ll read a book that is so jaw-droppingly good, you will wonder how someone can take something as prosaic as words and produce such absolute magic. And magic of so many kinds. This is a piece of descriptive writing like no other I have ever read.

On the surface, a novel about family life; the smooth and the rough, the loves and the battles; the present and the past. But that really does not justice to what is a work of mythology as powerful as anything that steps out of the obscuring mists of the past. Indeed, if you want to know what elemental magic feels like, you only need to read this book. It is surreal whilst being grounded in the mundane. It is sumptuous whilst being ordinary. It conjures the most basic of magics out the world around us and casts each character in an elemental role whilst, at the same time, describing the everyday lives of people.

In this it proves that the real dramas, the highs and lows of life, the magic, the wonder, the mystery, are all to be found in the everyday, in the relationships we have with those closest to us and the world in which we live.

To have sustained such powerful and magical writing for page after page, to have served the reader with a rich feast without once faltering, is the mark of a truly great writer. It is a book that sings. It is a book that deserves whatever inadequate praise I can heap upon it. It is a book that has so much more to say about people and life than a dozen other writers could muster over a lifetime of writing. It is a book that deserves to be lauded.

Fremder - Russell Hoban

2011-07-01T18:04:00.001+01:00

I was both bemused and amused by a quote on the cover of this that stated the book recalls Orwell’s 1984 and Wells’s The Time Machine. It does neither. If the work is akin to any other work of science fiction it is to Lem’s Solaris or the Strugatsky brothers’ Roadside Picnic. Because whilst it is set in a dystopian future, the story itself is about the individual and their sense of identity. It is much more about inner space than outer space.

Essentially the book is about Fremder’s quest to discover what it is that makes him unique. It is everyone’s quest who ever gave any thought to who they were and what it is that has shaped them. Hoban has simply used a future setting to accentuate the philosophical questions.

And he does it with his usual assured use of language, constructing a story that perfectly synchronises content and form. Indeed, this is one of those (many) books you can hand to someone who declaims all science fiction to be poorly written pulp about alien invasions. The story is complex, the imagery is striking, and the reader is made to work without ever feeling left behind.

Hoban is vastly under-rated, in my view. He is a fiercely intelligent writer, witty, one who has never settled into a rut or routine. He writes with equal skill for children and adults (in itself a remarkable achievement), and makes no compromise to fashion or the ‘literary’ world. As a result, his books are far more passionate and engaging than many that are lauded.

The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

2011-06-25T11:13:00.002+01:00

I haven’t read Halo Jones since it first appeared in the comic 2000AD and this is the first time I’ve read it in its entirety. It takes it to a whole new level. I always remembered it as powerful, it was clear I never appreciated the subtlety (although that may be as much to do with the print medium – the comic wasn’t exactly on high quality paper). Whatever the case, it was perfect material for 1984 and it just got better as it progressed.

Halo Jones is a young woman living in the 50th century. An ordinary young woman in a dead end existence, desperate to get out of the sink estate to which she had been confined. She was not particularly clever (although street-wise), she was not possessed of super powers or criminal tendencies, she was just ordinary. And therein is the power of the story, because she reflected the everyday experience of a lot of people.

In her determination to get out, she takes lowly jobs where she can find them, finds her old friendships and certainties breaking up or being destroyed, and ends up serving in the military as the only way of getting a roof over her head and food in her belly. And when she tries to walk away from that she realises there is nothing else left but the hell of combat.

Cheery stuff for a comic. Yet the story is leavened with wit and sympathy. And Halo is nothing if not resourceful. Although further stories were planned, they never got produced and it is in some ways fitting that she fades out of history.

The storyline is strong and subtle. Much of the back story (and there is a lot of it) is introduced without pages of exposition. The characters are beautifully rounded. And Moore is not afraid to kill people off in ways consistent with the world in which they live. He is not afraid to explore the experience of readers as well. The Glyph is, ironically, a memorable character.

Gibson’s drawing is excellent throughout. His use of light is extremely skilled, a new angle seems to be found at every turn, and his ability to conjure complex scenes in black and white without ever losing the important stuff in a fussy background fills me with awe. As for the colour cover of this edition – love at first sight.

The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

2011-06-25T11:13:00.001+01:00

Lint - Steve Aylett

2011-06-24T10:16:00.002+01:00

This book is a joke. OK, it’s a bit of an in joke, but you only need to have a passing interest in pulp sci fi to get it. And even if you don’t it is surreal enough and daft enough to raise a smile or three.

In essence, this is the life story of Jeff Lint. It is also part of the life story of SF, and of the strange people attracted to it (usually the ones who are not interested in SF, but there for the money). It charts the ups, downs, sideways steps, and downright inside-out turnings of trying to make a living from writing and all the other bizarre things that writers have to do and put up with. That Jeff Lint is mad as a box of hammers (think Philip K Dick played by John Belushi) adds to the... dare I say... colour.

There is also a nod (and a wink) to the overlapping field of conspiracy theory – those promulgated by Lint and those that circulated about him. Most notably, the ‘Jeff Lint is dead’ industry, and its counter theorists who don’t believe he is dead. Even though he is. Possibly.

In all the fun, there is also a satirical edge, one that is not above poking fun (and sharp sticks) at itself, the sci fi world, and the complete lack of comprehension (and outright hostility) of outsiders. Also on display here is good writing. Not just technically, but in the ability to spin a joke into a book without it ever flagging. True, there is plenty of material to work with, but Aylett has the trick of writing dead pan. And the result is a biography that will now seep into the subconscious and squat there making me keep half an eye open for The Caterer comics whenever I pass a second-hand bookshop.

A Princess Of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

2011-06-22T20:08:00.000+01:00

I first read this during a long summer in which I devoured books at a furious rate. Perhaps as a relief from A Level literature, I stuck to pulp and lightweight sci fi. Most notably, I waltzed through E E Doc Smith’s books and then happily lost myself in ERBdom. Tarzan. Pelucidar. And Barsoom. There were probably others, but I didn’t keep any of them so I can’t really remember.

What I do remember is that I enjoyed them Barsoom books without ever getting over excited about them. This probably had a great deal to do with the style in which they were written. At the time I was revelling in contemporary literature that was often ‘exploratory’ (an altogether more satisfying adjective than ‘experimental’, I feel). ERB seemed a little old-fashioned. Manly heroes, beautiful princesses, weird creatures. Yet even then I appreciated he had, in his way, produced exploratory work. And now...

I treated myself to the Barnes & Noble edition containing the first three Barsoom books. Beautifully presented (although shockingly copy edited), I have been able to wallow. Not just in a direct link to that summer, but in books that were much better than I remembered. Yes, there are manly heroes, beautiful princesses, weird creatures, and those gorgeous dying landscapes of Mars, but ERB knew how to put a story together and keep it moving with enough pace to satisfy those who wanted adventure and enough detail and craft to satisfy those who like a bit of depth to their entertainment.

And entertainment is what these books are. There isn’t much beyond that in the pages, but what there is sufficiently stimulating to lift these works out of the ordinary. ERB’s writing is workmanlike, clear, and only now and then prone to rambling attempts to give scientific explanations that inevitably sound flat these days. But he avoids the breathlessness that is a common fault of lesser writers in this area. And there were hundreds of them. Sensationalists rushing to get to the next cliff-hanger and leaving all semblance of story and character behind.

Great fun. And if the next generation of Martian explorers don’t find those long deserted cities, it’ll only be because they are looking in the wrong place.

Under A Canvas Sky - Clare Peake

2011-06-12T11:15:00.001+01:00

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hold Mervyn Peake to have been a genius. As a painter, illustrator, poet and novelist he excelled. But there is one aspect of his genius that is rarely listed, but which should not be overlooked. In collaboration with his wife Maeve Gilmore (a superb artist in her own right), he was a genius parent.

If you want proof, read this book. It is there in several ways. To begin with, the story it tells. Clare was the youngest child of the Peakes and her father’s illness began when she was seven. The harrowing tale of this wonderful artist’s descent into a living hell has been documented more fully elsewhere. It still makes me cry. The perspective here is of a child. Clare Peake does not attempt an adult’s retrospective other than to explain this was her life and, as a child, hard as it was (and the pain emerges later), that is how it was.

To write so confidently and simply about this, as Clare Peake does, is a great gift. She tells her story. And it becomes clear just what wonderful parents she had, that their talents as artists spilled over into their care for their children. It was not conventional. On the other hand it was not outrageously bohemian. It was a childhood of love. Because the artistic genius of the parents did not make them precious, did not make them feel superior to lesser mortals (unlike some of the unprintable people they met along the way, especially when Mervyn Peake became ill).

As a combination of biography and memoir it does not gloss over the bad times, but neither does it dwell on them. This is no rosy-visioned romp in a perfect childhood; but neither is it a misery fest. The straightness, openness, and honesty of the work is also a testament to the genius of the parents who laid the groundwork for someone who has had to grow up and make a life of their own knowing they had famous parents. And it is clear from this work, those foundations were strong.

Having read widely about the Peakes, this is a fresh perspective. It tells a familiar story without once making you think you’ve been there before. No mean feat. The writing is beautiful in its simplicity, the story is told with equal clarity (and having grown up through the same period, I have to confess there was a great deal of nostalgia on my part and a nodding of the head in agreement with sentiments expressed), and I feel privileged to have been allowed another glimpse into the life of this family.

A Web Of Air - Philip Reeve

2011-06-07T11:11:00.000+01:00

There must come a point in a sequence of books when the author hits the wall. When you add to that the problems caused by writing prequels (in which the outcome is known if you have already read the original books), a degree of sagginess is bound to set in. That is the case with this, Reeve’s second prequel to his Mortal Engines books.

Having said that, it is still an inventive book. The ideas are there. The setting, the working out of the ideas… but the characters feel flat and the developing relationship between Fever Crumb and Arlo feels contrived. We are given no motivation for what happens between them (or perhaps I just missed it). And the same is true for the ending of the book, which felt like being served a slice of yesterday’s stale cheesecake after having eaten a slice of cold pizza.

Reeve starts from a high level, so this is not a disaster of a book. Mayda is certainly an intriguing, if wasted, setting; and we can but hope we return and explore the city in greater depth. Let’s just hope, if he does, the cardboard cut-out stand-ins are replaced with real characters.

Read it. Enjoy it (once it gets going). But don’t expect too much of it.

Options - Robert Sheckley

2011-05-30T10:09:00.000+01:00

This book starts out in a fairly straightforward, if somewhat clichéd fashion. A space pilot is sitting at his controls when something goes wrong and he has to make a forced landing on a backwater planet. There he goes in search of a pare part. This being a superficially well-organised future, he heads for the nearest depot where spares are cached. This being a superficially well-organised future, they have every spare part conceivable except the one he wants. So far, so humdrum; but this is a Robert Sheckley novel.

There would be enormous mileage in this as a straightforward satire that exposes the sheer chaos of modern life and parodies the ultra smooth futures of much science fiction. Sheckley, however, takes a different turn altogether and in the course of this novel explores the meta narrative of writing a novel, well before it became the angsty province of ‘literary’ writers and with considerably more than a dozen of the aforementioned could muster between them.

On being told there may be a spare part on a different part of the planet, the pilot is given a robot to guide him through the dangers he will face. In keeping with the original premis, the robot has been delivered to the wrong planet and is programmed for an entirely different eco-system.

The journey starts out Carrollian and then gets bizarre. As attempts to progress are constantly thwarted, the author intervenes and constructs new narratives in an attempt to help the pilot reach his goal. Along the way we are treated to philosophical discussions and ideas, subverted pulp adventures, what appear to be entirely unrelated events (but which are, of course, the author trying to keep his narrative on course).

The result is exuberant chaos, shot through with hilarity and enough ideas to last other writers a lifetime. Yet it also manages to remain subtle. The jokes aren’t flagged or repeated to make sure you see how the author is. And it also manages to explore some of the fundamental problems of philosophy in an understandable way. What is more, this package is wrapped in a sure style; even when Sheckley is exploring and experimenting with language, it never gets to the point of self-indulgence or obscurity.

Naked Lunch - William Burroughs

2011-05-28T14:11:00.001+01:00

William Burroughs made notes during his journey to the otherworld that is Interzone and when he returned he formed them into a novel (for who would believe it was non-fiction?). In doing so, he created one of the most influential pieces of writing in the second half of the twentieth century. And it is influential not just in literary terms, but culturally in general, socially, and morally.

It is far too complex a text to treat properly in this form. A few paragraphs could say very little other than the fact that Burroughs taught a whole generation how to write anew, how to make music anew, how to view the world anew. For the breadth of his influence on a generation one need only look at the number of bands that have taken names from this and other books by him.

Yet this influence derived not so much from someone creating everything anew for themselves, rather it sprang from Burroughs honesty about the world he inhabited and an honesty in the way in which he recorded it. He drew on his experience (hence his insistence on writing what you know). The language and ideas come from the people he mixed with and the pulp literature of the day, much of the best of which also drew directly from the street.

Burroughs’ genius lay in the way in which he drew all that together, not just with honesty but with a vibrant prose and equally vibrant style that allows the reader to experience the hallucinatory weirdness of the world from the perspective of someone who gives not the slightest fuck about social, cultural, or literary mores.

The book still shocks and offends some (perhaps most) people. If there is shock and outrage it should be that our world is such that people feel the need to use drugs and gratuitous sex as an escape. Unfortunately, the outrage is often because someone has dared to expose the world for what it is.

All that aside, this is blistering writing: uncompromising, dark, and often very beautiful.

The Story Of The Amulet - E Nesbit

2011-05-15T11:48:00.001+01:00

The third of Nesbit’s books about the Psammead and the children who encounter this wish granting creature. (And yes, before I am again accused of simply rewriting book blurbs, I know the Psammead only appears in two of the three books and only grants wishes to the children in the first…). This one draws heavily on Nesbit’s knowledge of ancient cultures (especially Egypt) and her involvement with Socialism.

The children, parted from their parents and desperate for their return, are living in London with their Nurse. One day, whilst exploring shops near the British Museum, they come across the Psammead in a cage and, at the same time, acquire half an amulet. On returning home with the sand fairy and the ancient talisman, they learn that if they find the other part of the amulet they will be able have their hearts’ desires – the return of their parents.

A series of time travelling events ensue in which the children and, later in the book, an adult scholar who lives upstairs, have adventures. They travel to Egypt, Babylon, Atlantis, and a Tyrenean ship bound for the Tin Islands. They also go into the future, one that resembles Morris’s vision and in which Wells is revered as a prophet.

As to be expected, despite the hair-raising adventures, all ends well. This is typical Nesbit fare. Well written, informative without ever being dull, humorous, and socially aware without ever preaching. All in all a wonderful piece of escapism with the Psammead as bad tempered as ever

Jack On The Box - Jack Trevor Story

2011-05-15T11:46:00.000+01:00

A collection of short non-fiction pieces peripherally connected with the television series of the same name (exploring similar territory and themes), these first appeared in the later part of the ‘70s. JTS was best known for his Sexton Blake stories and for his comic novels that together in a culture that tends to look down on pulp and comedy has done much to mask the author’s considerable talent.

I have written before, of his fiction, what a superb craftsman he was and this is evident just as much in his non-fiction. Economical, highly literate without once putting this talent before the subject matter, and always accessible without ever making any concessions. You have to engage with his writing – he has put in a lot of work and rightly expects readers to do the same.

And the result is a witty journey through his world. It is sometimes honest, sometimes heartbreaking, and there are times you want to kick his shin, but it is never less than entertaining and thoughtful. You cannot help but think how these things (love, work, family, and the absurdities of modern life) apply to one’s self.

And for writers it is also a journey into the experience of the majority of those who graft away at a keyboard. It is all too easy, if you read the literary pages of the papers, to assume that writers live privileged and refined lives, pulling in the dosh whilst doing an easy job in pleasant surroundings. The parties, the erudite chatter, the big fat royalty cheques.

As if.

Read this book and you’ll find out what it is really like. The hard slog writing, the hard slog selling, royalty cheques not worth the paper they are printed, living in cheap, rented accommodation; not to mention the strain on relationships (or the sheer luck of finding a partner who puts up with the depressions, moods, the need to tiptoe quietly when creativity is in full flow). It’s all there. Not exactly a coherent treatise on the writing life, but the writing life is anything but coherent.

Over it all, there is one impression it is difficult not to come away with. No matter how annoying JTS may have been at times, now matter what his faults (to which he readily admits), no matter how surreal the writing and his vision of the world, you cannot help but feel the real warmth of the man.

The Trouble With Trudy - Jack Trevor Story

2011-05-06T10:38:00.000+01:00

A sequel to The Trouble With Harry, this takes up the story a year later. The same characters in the same location are suddenly inundated with the arrival of babies. When a runaway unmarried mother stumbles on the scene, followed in short order by an American Marketing Executive, the fun begins.

Clearly intended as a light piece to the darkness of Harry (although these terms are relative as Harry was anything but dark, despite the dead body) it doesn’t have quite the same edge. Yet it still manages to be well-written, thoughtful, with some excellent touches of characterisation, and giving just a hint of what Story would later develop as his major themes.

Whilst this may be a lightweight piece, it demonstrates that this should never be equated with sloppy writing. Story always gave value for money with his work and this is full of little gems. Moments in the narrative that made me smile and laugh, moments that made me re-read a phrase, sentence, and sometimes a whole paragraph for the sheer enjoyment of his craft, the ease with which his own voice shines through without ever drowning out the tale he is telling and the characters it involves.

Kleinzeit - Russell Hoban

2011-05-04T10:25:00.001+01:00

A novel about coming to terms with creativity really doesn’t sound like it would be scintillating. Indeed, writers who write about writing tend to be pompous, whining middle-class white men who have led charmed and privileged lives. Russell Hoban has always ploughed his own furrow (usually at 480º to everyone else’s) and has produced a delightfully surreal work that manages to be funny, philosophical, intriguing, so far off the wall there isn’t a wall in sight, and touching.

Kleinzeit, who works for an advertising agency, gets fired. Very quickly afterwards he finds himself in hospital with a recurring geometrical pain (his hypotenuse is a bit dodgy). Thereafter he is pitched into an adventure that has more than a touch of Lewis Carroll about it whilst remaining firmly a work by Russell Hoban.

Beyond that it is difficult to describe what happens. Kleinzeit encounters various characters and concepts, converses with Death, and falls in love with Sister. In the process his ailments fade and he begins to get to grips with whatever it is he is writing. Yet as you follow the journey, you realize you are in the hands of a writer who really should be celebrated as one of the great talents of literature.

This is, for all its themes, an accessible work, warm, beautifully written, full of momentum, overflowing with ideas, and great fun to read.

Black God's Kiss - C L Moore

2011-04-30T12:01:00.001+01:00

C L Moore, of course, being Catherine Moore. This is important. Even today, there are some who do not realise (a) that C L Moore was a woman and (b) just how important that was. And that’s before we get onto the book. Pulp fantasy has always had an image problem, not helped by fantasy art work (Paizo, take note). Yet like all branches of writing, above the 90% crap rises the 10% that is well written, innovative, and worthy of respect.

In a field dominated by men, the work of the few women writers tends to stand out anyway, but Catherine Moore went one further and gave us Jirel of Joiry. Because fantasy was not only dominated by male writers, but their protagonists were male as well. The only women were the ones you saw on the lurid covers. Helpless frails or dark, seductive (and invariably scheming and evil) priestesses or witches. Jirel was different. Oh, how she was different.

In the mid to late 1930s, Jirel was positively inspiring. A woman. Strong. Bold. A warrior and leader. Willing to tackle mortal and magical foes alike. Without once being portrayed as a clone of her male counterparts. And even in the company she kept (works by Lovecraft and Howard) she stood her ground.

Moore’s writing is rich. It is probably best to read these stories in instalments (as they were intended), because in one sitting it can be a bit much. But for all that, these are also beautifully written. Characterization of Jirel is complex and sensitive; the stories are simply but strongly plotted; and the scenes are well imagined and described. It is no wonder that not only did Moore open the way for many other women writers, especially in science fiction and fantasy, she set a high standard as the starting point for those that followed.

Moore was not the only woman writing sf and fantasy, but she gave us its first true female protagonist, someone who was far removed from the masturbatory fantasy art which Paizo has chosen to put on the cover of this collection. A shame. Given the huge amount of illustrative talent that exists, they could surely have found something more appropriate.

Asylum Piece - Anna Kavan

2011-04-18T13:53:00.000+01:00

Anna Kavan – a character’s name from one of her earlier works, adopted by the author who went on to produce some astonishing work that is all too sadly neglected these days, despite the unflagging championship by her publisher. This was the first of her ‘new’ work, a series of interlinked vignettes that explore her recent experiences of breakdown and confinement in an asylum.

On the surface this does not sound like it makes for a cheerful work. And on the surface, it doesn’t. But this is not a dark work either. It is honest, at times chilling, often surreal, and offers the reader a glimpse into a troubled mind. Yet the overall picture is not one of derangement. Rather there is an underlying bewilderment. Why is this happening to me? And it manages this without once falling into self-pity.

This is down to the style. It is the simplicity that speaks of complexity, the straightforwardness that tells of a hideous maze just negotiated, the acuteness of observation that picks out the one slight detail which is most indicative of the inner state. It is the use of imagery and symbolism with such a light touch, you notice only the echoes and not the original call.

In some regards, the analysis of her own problems is extremely clinical. She reports events rather than trying to reproduce emotion. Yet this makes the work all the more effective, because it adds a layer of authenticity that histrionics would obscure: the sense of isolation, of looking in on one’s self, of trying to make sense of events when it is the world that seems deranged, of remaining unobtrusive in a Kafka-esque world where standing up gets one noticed by people one would rather not attract.

And the overall effect is intensely human and vibrant, all too aware of the prisons we make for ourselves as well as those made by others – physical, intellectual, emotional, metaphorical, and symbolic.

The Dragonfly Pool - Eva Ibbotson

2011-04-10T11:15:00.000+01:00

There is a great deal of the author in this book and it clearly draws on her own memories of the period leading up to the Second World War. Her father was a physiologist and the central character has a father who is a doctor. Ibbotson went to Dartington Hall School, which has transferred itself to the book as Delderton Hall. Bergania, the small European country that features in the book is not unlike parts of Austria, from which Ibbotson originated.

This reliance on her own experience allows Ibbotson to draw a compelling and realistic backdrop to a simple and powerful tale about friendship. True, it is aimed at a readership just reaching double figures, and once or twice points out things that an adult reader will long since have understood, but that does not hurt the book in any way. It does not talk down to its readers, it never breaks off a well paced story to fill in background detail, and it relishes the portraits it paints of the characters involved.

Tally, a young London girl is offered a scholarship to a school in Devon. Although she does not want to leave her father and aunts, she reluctantly agrees to go and soon discovers that not all private schools are the same. Delderton is a progressive school and there she blossoms. As a person whose only worries are for other people she is the driving force behind a cultural visit to a Europe on the brink of war and aids the escape of a prince from a country about to be overrun by the German army. Back in England they discover that fascists can be found in all walks of life and the prince must escape once again.

This manages to be an exciting story with welcome overtones of the anarchic humour of her ghost books. The characters are broadly sketched, yet have a core of realism that prevents them becoming grotesque. And it is packed with an impassioned view of the world that argues for the kind of education and upbringing that is all too often dismissed, especially by people who have no real knowledge of education. Yet that is never a lecture. Rather it forms an essential part of the story.

I can heartily recommend this to all adults, and especially those with children as it is not only a good read in its own right but comes from an author who can provide a bridge from the fantastical (do read her ghost books if you haven’t yet) to the magical in the everyday and sometime grim real world.

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

2011-04-04T11:51:00.000+01:00

A book that is often compared with Joyce’s Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway is, for me (and insofar as they can actually be compared), by far the better of the two. I appreciate the Joyce, but it sags under its own weight. Mrs Dalloway, on the other hand, is seductive because of its apparent lightness.

This is not to say it is lightweight. Far from it, but like all good literature it is easy to read and then stays with you for days and weeks afterwards as you mull over the content, finding yourself delving into deeper and deeper layers of meaning and structure.

The basic idea is simplicity itself. On a June day in 1923, Clarissa Dalloway prepares for one of her renowned parties. During the same day, Septimus Smith, a soldier whose shell-shock has taken him to the edge of madness is taken by his wife to see a specialist.

Through various stylistic techniques – principally stream of consciousness, but also the melding of direct and indirect speech with voiced and unvoiced thought, and the use of cinematic cutting – we follow these characters and those who surround them. Whilst the two principal characters never meet, their lives do make contact. And through the contrasts and the histories of the characters Woolf addresses a number of issues.

It is a subtle book with a dream-like quality: one scene suggests another and time is a fluid medium. We move from inner thoughts to omniscient viewpoint. And the whole thing simmers on a low flame of hysteria. Which makes some events all the more startling. And although there appears to be nothing in the way of commentary about the novel, it is once you go back and start thinking about the undercurrents that the flavour really comes through. Like an Eliot poem where the most banal of events and existences serve to make you wonder about the alternatives and just how inevitable it all is.

A book like this is difficult to sum up in a few short paragraphs. Virginia Woolf is a favourite author of mine (who would have guessed) and I would heartily recommend this to anyone, not just because it is a great novel, but also because of the technique. It is worth studying for that alone.

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

2011-03-24T11:38:00.001Z

One could wish that all writing was this accomplished, but without such peaks, we would not be able to see the troughs or the other peaks beyond. Yet such literary peaks (unlike their geomorphological counterparts) are the easiest to climb. Deceptively so. And The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is no exception. For we have a short, simple tale of a teacher and the influence she has (or thinks she has) over a particular group of girls.

Packed into the 120 or so pages of this novel are endless and complex layers of characterisation and moral exploration, not to mention social history. And with the style of writing so beautifully mirroring the story itself, we are presented with a portrait that is by turns comic and tragic with all the shades between, and which is always compelling.

As the narrative progresses it becomes more sophisticated, maturing as the children mature and their understanding of what is going on around them increases. It makes use of remarkable leaps back and forth, of startling imagery (the death of Mary Macgregor, in particular, is one I always find deeply moving because of its inevitability and the way it is echoed in her response as a child to the explosive chemistry experiment).

The fragmentation of time, however, presents a seamless narrative, that makes sense in the way it is presented. It is what allows for such a compressed piece of work. For one could imagine a lesser writer being tempted to present us with a 1000 page epic embracing all social history and world events, Miss Brodie’s holidays abroad, and so on. But we need none of that in detail. We know enough about Jean Brodie to know how she reacts to these things as an individual. It is clear in the way she attempts, increasingly, to manipulate her ‘set’, how her mind works and has been influenced by her own life (of which learn surprisingly little) and larger events. In the small world of the school we see the larger world at work. In the Brodie set, we see how friendships develop and how minds are shaped, not always in the way the shaper assumes.

Muriel Spark’s writing here is breathtaking. It is economical without ever giving up on richness; makes use of poetic language and technique (particularly the repetition and variations on theme); manages to be modernist without once severing its links with the long and venerable Scottish literary tradition (which has, in any case, always been innovative); and paints a picture that lingers and changes as one continues to think of what kind of person Miss Jean Brodie was and the effects she had on her charges.

Running Wild - J G Ballard

2011-03-21T15:55:00.000Z

Whilst The Day Of Creation seems to be a coda to Ballard’s earlier work, this novella prefigures the later novels. It is not a complete change. All the Ballardian concerns, ideas, and symbols are there, as is the trademark surrealism. But Ballard is no longer prophesying as the world he foresaw had, by the time of this work, come to pass. So Ballard lifts the body of society onto the table and with a sharp knife, flays the skin to let us look underneath.

Short and passionless, as befits the psychological report the story claims to be, this is nonetheless compelling, not least because of what is left unsaid; because of its implications. It also suits the world described – a safe, sterile environment, the perfect world as envisioned by a particularly unimaginative class of people who still hold sway over the world, bankrupting it whilst withdrawing into their elitist and protected enclaves. In this, Ballard is still a prophet because he foresaw that these people were taking the seeds of their own doom in with them.

Set in a small, gated community protected by the latest in security and serviced by those who live without the wire fencing, this tells of the massacre of the inhabitants and the disappearance of all the children. Theories abound, but very few people are prepared to face the truth. One such is the narrator who shows just how the children killed their parents and why.

This nightmare scenario probably does not shock so much now, but Ballard was there early pointing out that keeping children in a sterile environment is not a good thing. Over protectiveness and the ubiquity of digital entertainment have already given rise to concerns about social interaction and obesity. Take that to its extremes and one wonders how long it will be before the social problems lead to extreme psychological breakdown.

As always, Ballard writes with a visual eye. The scene is beautifully realised, the estate accurately drawn (although only sketchily as this is a short work). Indeed, the environment is the key and it is this that is given more space than the human characters that in habit it. They are unknown and, in the case of the children because they are sui generis, unknowable until found. And perhaps even then they would remain a mystery. The story is filmic in its quality and would make great television, provided the production team could be trusted to keep to the low key delivery that Ballard uses and which delivers this kind of story with far greater impact than thrills and spills.

Not, perhaps, a master work from Ballard, but certainly a thought provoking and eerie piece of work.

The Day Of Creation - J G Ballard

2011-03-10T11:19:00.002Z

What do you do when you have written a highly acclaimed novel that not only sheds light on the horrors of war, but which also sheds light on the roots of your earlier work? Well, if you are J G Ballard, you go back to those roots and reprise your earliest novels. But you do so with a whole new level of understanding and skill.

On the surface, The Day Of Creation belongs with Ballard’s first four (or three, as he would have it) novels. It does have a great deal in common with The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World (which in turn were born out of earlier short stories and The Wind From Nowhere). The world and society of the novels is dysfunctional. The central character is a doctor. The central character is an outsider on many levels, not least because of their descent into psychosis. And the whole thing is deeply symbolic. This might not sound like a particularly gripping read, but Ballard had an extra trick up his sleeve. He could tell a good story. And The Day of Creation goes well beyond those earlier works in terms of content and style.

Set in sub-Saharan Africa, the book tells of how a new river appears in the arid landscape and the effects it has on the lives of those who live close by. Mallory, the central character and local WHO doctor, has already been drilling in a dry lake bed to see if he can find water. The town where he lives has been deserted by most of its inhabitants because of a war between a guerrilla group and government forces. It is an uneasy dynamic that is thrown into chaos when a distant earthquake alters the level of a buried aquifer and releases water.

Mallory, already on the edge of sanity, is somehow convinced he has created the river. Torn between the desire to irrigate the Sahara and to destroy the river that will flood his drilling project, he steals an abandoned car ferry and sails upriver to seek its source. Chased by government forces, harried by a band of armed women, starving, diseased, he is driven by some inner force he does not understand. His only true companion is a young rebel soldier he calls Noon.

Whilst everyone else assumes his motives to be sexual, his relationship with the girl soldier is much more complex and forms one of the central strands of the book. It is developed with great subtlety because whilst it is a genuine relationship between two people, it also carries a huge weight of symbolism about the way in which Africa has been treated by outsiders and its own people. The river (named the Mallory), which symbolises Mallory’s own journey is a second strand that examines the relationship of people with the land and how they treat themselves.

The symbolism is powerful. The first time I read the book, I had vivid, potent dreams, much as many of Ballard’s early protagonists. They were not disturbing, but the book clearly unlocked something in me at the time. Whilst I was not affected in the same way this time (only the second time I have read this book), it did open many more layers to me. It is certainly difficult to avoid drawn parallels between the book and real events in Africa today, both sub-Saharan and Mediterranean parts of the continent. But life has provided more experience and Mallory’s search for himself, his journey back to his own beginnings, his search for love and a way to reconcile and heal all that he sees as awry and painful in the world make much more sense.

Ballard’s writing is also more assured. He was always a good writer, but there is a fluency about this work that is deceptive. It seems straightforward, less exotic than some of his earlier works, yet it manages to be more poetic and powerful as a result. And the final sentence, after everything has been lost, resonates not just with that loss, but with longing and hope, and with all the layers of meaning inherent in the book: ‘Sooner or later she will reappear, and I am certain that when she comes the Mallory will also return, and once again run the waters of its dream across the dust of a waiting heart.’

The Complete Poems - T S Eliot

2011-03-01T12:11:00.001Z

It would be difficult to overstate the effect that Eliot’s poetry had on me when I first read it. Unlike Auden’s work which I could not find a way into, I felt that Eliot’s poetry was an open and inviting doorway into a place where you could look at the things behind the world.

Reading the two so close together has allowed me to consider why this should be so. In the end, it comes down to the very simple fact that whilst both poets are undoubtedly fiercely intelligent and pack their work with reference and allusion, I do not need to understand it to get anything out of Eliot. Auden it seems to me uses his intelligence to obscure and exclude. Eliot uses his intelligence to open up and include.

This is not to say that I do not understand the levels of Eliot’s erudition. Well… some of them at least. And it did no harm to my understanding that I was already a great fan of Shakespeare, Dante, and Conrad; and steeped in Arthurian literature and analysis. However, it is Eliot’s imagery that first hooked me. Those first three lines of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ were enough. Anyone who could write like that was going to have a permanent place on my bookshelf (and I saved my three pounds and bought the hardback of the complete poems and plays which I still have).

At school (this was one of my A Level set texts) we worked from the Selected Poems. No Minor Poems etc. No Old Possum’s. Whilst we had a good teacher, that selection did somewhat obscure two things about Eliot’s poetry. Firstly was the way in which it developed. His increasing pre-occupation with religion is more obvious when the poems are read chronologically. The second is the varying quality of his work. The minor pieces simply do not compare with the epic quality of the major works. But that is to compare Eliot with Eliot, because even the pieces written in ‘Early Youth’ are assured and redolent with the voice that would later shake my world.

Dubliners - James Joyce

2011-02-19T15:07:00.000Z

Joyce built a reputation on a remarkably small base of work, very little of it conventional. This collection of shorter pieces represents his earliest work and show an almost uncanny ability to use language. The pieces progress from childhood to death, from short to long, and they become deeper.

Each of the pieces is based around a moment of revelation, sometimes for the central character, sometimes for the reader, often for both. Yet at no point does Joyce lead. He gives each vignette in as near neutral a way as is possible, given his own developing style and method. Language used is appropriate to character, and sometimes seems a bit rough round the edges because of it; environment is just as important as those who move within it.

These are, to begin with, glimpses from the window, small moments of the kind we all see every day from the window of a bus or train. Little events that we cannot hope to embed in a wider context but which nonetheless are complete in themselves. As the stories progress that wider context begins to emerge and, indeed, we see some of these characters again in Ulysses.

The skill of Joyce is in writing pieces that leave us at first thinking: “I could have written that”; and then very quickly realising that we couldn’t. Not just because one needs to have been intimately associated with a place and its people, but also because one needs to have a natural ability to paint such detail with so few words.

Although I say natural, Joyce worked at his craft. But that simply increases the worth of the pieces because for all that he puts in; they still seem light and alive with the kind of energy one expects of a rough draft.

Although much is rightly made of ‘The Dead’, I still prefer the earlier, shorter pieces which for some reason remind me so much of the paintings of Tavik Frantisek Simon and to lesser extent Jack Butler Yeats. Moments captured. Frozen. Displayed for our exploration. Moments, also, that informed, shaped, and populated the imagination of Joyce himself.

W H Auden Penguin Poets - W H Auden

2011-02-19T13:49:00.000Z

I am very firmly with Hugh MacDiarmid when it comes to Auden: “a complete wash-out”. I felt this when first introduced to his work in the early ‘70s. I still feel it now. The only time his poetry works for me is when he is not trying to dazzle with his intellect. For example, the first of his ‘Two Songs for Hedli Anderson’ (also known as ‘Funeral Blues’ and by its opening phrase ‘Stop all the clocks’). The simplicity of language and imagery is where the power of this poem lies.

There is no doubting Auden’s skill, his ability to use many poetic forms, or his erudition. However, for me (and I realise this is entirely subjective) all this produces is a smooth, glacial surface on which my interest is frozen and from whence it slides.

Modem Times 2.0 Plus...

2011-02-18T12:33:00.000Z

This slim volume (hoorah for slim volumes) contains a new Jerry Cornelius novella, a short essay, an interview, and an outline bibliography. Whilst there is nothing spectacularly new in either the essay (on London) or the interview (by Terry Bisson) for anyone acquainted with Moorcock’s life and work, both are nonetheless illuminating, witty, and well worth reading – not just for insight into Moorcock, but also into the creative process. The bibliography lists (over eight pages) Moorcock’s phenomenal output – which would be amazing enough in its own right but which does include his journalism, musical work, or the less quantifiable contribution he has made over the decades to editing, encouraging, and promoting the work of others.

I am, of course, a Moorcock fan.

I have been reading his work since I was about seven (some of it before I even knew it was him in anonymous pieces in the likes of Look and Learn magazine). From his conventional rip-roaring fantasies to his non-genre work, from the conventional to the exploratory, I have devoured his output (and own most of it). One of the great joys of discovering Moorcock when I did was that you didn’t have to wait long for a new one to appear on the shelves. Interlocking works that he has, over the years, drawn together into a vast, multi-volume, work.

Jerry Cornelius is quintessential Moorcock. These comic strips, short stories, novellas, and novels encompass all his styles, themes, and concerns. Because Moorcock is more than just a fantasy or sf writer (which would be no bad thing). Moorcock’s work is informed by political awareness, a desire to explore and understand the human condition, and a great deal of warmth.

Modem Times 2.0 is a novella that demonstrates that over the years, Moorcock has lost none of his touch. It is a sparkling piece of work that uses old methods and styles to gain a new perspective on today’s’ world. Superficially light and, at times, knockabout (look out for the three literary worthies and their prizes), you find yourself suddenly aware of the depths of the piece. It is difficult to call it a novella as it does not have a plot in the conventional sense. The Cornelius stories (even those carried conventionally by a recognizable storyline) are more a method of bringing bits of the world into focus than they are stories with beginning, middle and end. It would be senseless trying to describe what this is about. You have to read it and tune into it. But I can say that it is eloquent, smooth, with an underlying flavour of the ‘60s still present for the tutored palate. Besides, any story that manages to mention The First Spaceship on Venus (the first movie I saw on my own at a cinema), just has to be one of the best things ever written.

Empire Of The Sun - J G Ballard

2011-02-16T14:57:00.001Z

It is difficult to find things to say about this book that people haven’t probably read elsewhere. As Ballard’s best known work (and for many people the first time they’d actually heard of him) and as one that has achieved great acclaim (not to mention being adapted as stunning movie of which Ballard approved and in which he makes a brief appearance) it has been dealt with in great length. However, there are some things worth mentioning because they get overlooked.

To begin with, it is a work of fiction. Because Ballard based it on his own childhood experiences of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, there are some who think it is a recounting of those experiences. If you read Ballard’s autobiography, Miracles of Life, it is clear there are enormous differences. This is worth pointing out, because there are many who undervalue the book for this reason. Jim’s adventures may be based on Ballard’s experience, but they are a deliberate fictional account. The book is a carefully constructed novel, using all the literary devices applicable to such a piece of fiction. If it is read as a recounting of actual events, these other layers can be lost. And there are layers in plenty: levels of imagery concerned with dissociation, themes about family and companionship, arcs concerned with Jim’s development and understanding that occur despite all the obstacles put in his way – including the physical and psychic debilitation caused by starvation.

As a wok of fiction it is one of a minority of literary works aimed largely at an adult audience that has a child as its protagonist. Children do feature more in fiction now, but there was a long period where they appeared only on the fringes and even then only as a bit of colour to add realism. Quite why children have been neglected in this way is a mystery to me. They are ideal central characters because, as with Jim, they can view the world in a naïve way that points up its absurdity. Throughout Empire of the Sun, Jim experiences things which he doesn’t understand yet which are clear to the adult reader. This juxtaposition is an acute tool that heightens events and attitudes.

It is a work that is key to understanding Ballard’s other work. He himself said that he spent twenty years forgetting the events and another twenty years remembering them. It is certainly true that whilst the novels that follow Empire of the Sun address the same concerns and ideas, use the same imagery, they do so in a different way. It would be going a bit far to say Ballard had tamed his demons, but he certainly had the measure of them. The vocabulary of the Ballardian landscape is to be found in those war years. The empty swimming pools, the ruins, the chaos, the hallucinatory attention to detail, the closed worlds with their own sets of rules, the roaming bands of brigands, the fascination with machinery…All these and more informed Ballard’s imagination and shaped the way in which he narrated his vision of the world.

Finally it is a book that makes no pretension to being literary. By which I mean that Ballard allows the story to drive the language and very often we are treated to straightforward and unaffected prose. Which makes the hallucinatory episodes, the description of the gleaming Mustang aircraft, the stark portrayal of violence all the more powerful. Ballard strips the language back and keeps it out of the way of the compelling story.

I could say so much more. It is a novel that encapsulates the twentieth century in a way few others even come close to. It is powerful, unsentimental (at times savage), non-judgemental, and brutally honest. All the ambiguities and evils of conflict are set out for our inspection. And for all the atrocities it exposes, this is also a novel about the development of the artist because from all that happened to him and all that he learned of that period, Ballard became a writer of the deepest integrity who understand more than most just how surreal, absurd, and terrifyingly glorious the world can be.

The Lunatics Of Terra - John Sladek

2011-01-25T11:15:00.001Z

Story collections are always difficult to assess unless they revolve around a theme or concern the same characters. Without that connection, you are left with disparate pieces written over a long period (in this case eleven years), often arranged out of chronological order, and placed between one set of covers in order to maximise their earning potential for the writer (and there’s nothing wrong with that).

Despite that, you know when you read a collection of John Sladek short stories, you are in for a treat. Doubly so as he has appended an Afterword to each piece which offers a little bit of context although, with Sladek, you always have to be watching over your shoulder.

The treat with these works is twofold. To begin with, Sladek is an accomplished writer. He knows how to make words work for him, producing work that is easy to read but which can be peeled back layer after layer until you realise there is no end, that this is the work of a sophisticated, brilliant, and slightly skewed imagination. Then there is the other skew. Sladek’s wit. He is a satirist with all the sharpness of acid in a paper cut. Which is to say it is no blunt instrument. Subtle, slight, and deeply biting.

And the range of his targets? Well… everything, really. But it is not an empty, lashing out. He does not suffer fools, especially people who do not use their intelligence. Yet beneath his devastating wit is a warmth often lacking in satire. As an example, Sladek had no time at all for flaky pseudo-science. But he still respected people whose beliefs led them to make or try to make a better world. He sent up all the tropes of science fiction, yet clearly had a love of the genre because he knew it inside out.

Sladek was also a literary writer. These aren’t just funny science fiction stories. They go way beyond that in much the same way Gulliver’s Travels goes beyond being a set of funny science fiction adventures. Human life with all its flaws is laid bare. And for Sladek, human frailty is, in fact, our saving, because ultimately, it is our idiocy that will throw grit into the gears of our plans for world domination.

The Crock Of Gold - James Stephens

2011-01-20T11:47:00.000Z

Published in 1912, this is a glorious book. By turns comical, witty, philosophical, spiritual, and whimsical – sometimes in a single sentence – it tells of the train events set in motion when a philosopher gives advice to a farmer that leads to some Leprecauns losing their crock of gold. This flimsy vehicle is what carries what is, essentially, a celebration of Ireland.

We meet philosophers (Druids) and their wives, free-spirited children who play in the woods, Pan (who is sent packing back to his Mediterranean stomping ground), Leprecauns, the Shee, and many of the old gods of Ireland. We also meet an array of mortal characters and, of course, policeman. No story of this nature about Ireland would be complete without its policeman – a race for whom there was, clearly, some affection if not much respect. In that, it is a natural precursor to the work of Flann O’Brien.

So far, it sounds somewhat light. Yet the story is infused with deep philosophical and spiritual insights, offered up in the form of discussion and illustration. And the closer these get to the realities of the modern world (in which this is set), personified by ‘the city’, the more sombre and disturbing they become.

The book is beautifully written. Lyrical, fluid, and highly assured. Stephens was a poet and novelist whose work is steeped in the folklore and mythology of his native land. Although little known these days, his literary worth was recognised in his lifetime, not just by the public, but his contemporaries in the literary world. Indeed, Joyce asked Stephens to complete Finnegans Wake if Joyce was unable to do so.

Stephens work deserves to be better known and if you ever come across his books (probably in a second hand bookshop) I urge you to give them a try. I bought The Crock of Gold forty years ago and it has given me joy and food for thought over the years (not least that my 1931 hardback edition is beautifully produced and cost 2/-).

The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien

2011-01-15T16:02:00.001Z

This is a wonderful novel that delighted me no less on this reading than on any other. There are all sorts of clichés that could apply: quintessentially Irish being but one. That it may be, but it is so much more, because it takes that cliché, turns it outside in and downside up, gives it a bloody good shake, and then proceeds to subvert everything that emerges.

On the surface it is a simple tale. The unnamed protagonist, an unsuccessful farmer and pub owner, is obsessed with a fictional philosopher by the name of de Selby. Having written what he believes to be the definitive critical work on de Selby, he finds he does not have enough money to publish it, the family businesses having been run into the ground by one Divney. Together they plot to rob a wealthy local man called Mathers. During the robbery, the protagonist kills Mathers and buries him in a ditch.

Whilst burying the corpse, Divney makes off with the money and hides it, claiming they need to draw no suspicion on themselves. The protagonist does not let Divney out of his sight for the next three years, finally persuading him to tell him where the money is. Divney tells him it is under the floorboards of Mathers' house.

From this point on the slightly odd, slightly comical tale takes a double left hand turn up and off the wall. Surreal hardly begins to cover the protagonist’s adventures. He finds Mathers still sitting in his own house although the box with the money has gone. Mathers tells him of a police station where the policemen will know where the box has gone.

The police, however, are obsessed with bicycles, putting forward a strange theory about the way in which people riding bicycles swap their substance so that bicycles become more human and human become bicycle-like the more they are together. There are many other oddities and wonders, although none divert from the journey the protagonist makes to the gallows. But even that is not as it seems and the denouement takes us full circle, with the prospect of a large section of the book repeating in a cyclical exploration of absurdities. The text is peppered with footnotes referring to de Selby and his own philosophies creating a whole world beyond the novel.

For all its complexities and absurdities, this is not a difficult book to read. It does, however, repay close attention, because it is one of the great novels of the twentieth century. That claim is often made, but O’Brien ranks with Beckett and Joyce. It is a powerful book that taps the mythology of Ireland as much as it uses the national character (often in comic form) to explore universal verities.

Whilst many hail O’Brien’s first book as a masterpiece, I believe it is this work that consolidates his place as a literary genius and which takes the slightly shambolic form of the first book and creates from it a firmly structured work of modernist form that explores the inner landscape of humanity in a way few other books manage.

Mercier and Camier - Samuel Beckett

2011-01-07T16:35:00.001Z

The missing link, if you will. Because if you want to know how Beckett went from the likes of Murphy and Watt to the trilogy and How It Is, or from Eleutheria to Waiting for Godot, you have to read this work. In both languages if you can. I no longer have my copy of Mercier et Camier, so must content myself with revisiting this by itself.

Written in French in 1946, Beckett shelved the work when he couldn’t find a publisher and it did not see the light of day again until 1970. It was written after Beckett had a literary revelation (partly expounded upon in Krapp’s Last Tape) about the direction his work should take. Stepping away from the shadow of Joyce, Beckett found his own darkness to inhabit, and his own style with which to explore a world whose boundaries he made ever smaller.

Mercier and Camier still has something of the feel of his earlier works about it, but the language is different and the setting, whilst still very much in the real world, has become a shade more surreal, a shade more abstract.

The book follows the fortunes of Camier and Mercier. They are, ostensibly, private investigators. What they investigate and for whom never enters into the book, although they do meet Watt and claim to have known Murphy. By turns comic and deeply philosophic and imbued with an atmosphere to which Robbe-Grillet owes some debt in The Erasers, this is a stunning work.

The stripped down language, ironic self-referencing, earthy subject matter, and railing against the absurdity of human existence are all present. Although not new to Beckett, they find their first, uniquely Beckettian expression here. The prose shows a promise of what is to come in his later novels and shorter pieces. The characters and conversation, the idle business of everyday life, introduce us almost completely to Vladimir and Estragon.

Mercier and Camier is considerably shorter than Mercier et Camier. Beckett rewrote each work rather than translated them. The original contains much that is uniquely French and which doesn’t move well to English idiom (hence the plea to read both versions if you can). Its brevity, clarity, and precise use of language make it an accessible read, although it does pay close reading to pick out the thematic echoes.

I know many people find Beckett obscure and difficult. He isn’t really. If you keep at the back your mind his love of silent movie stars such as Buster Keaton, if you watch a few Buster Keaton movies, then read some Beckett, you’ll have a taken a long step toward understanding him.

I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

2010-12-10T15:21:00.000Z

I was apprehensive about this. Wintersmith seemed to me to be a weak book – a novella trying to be a novel by padding out the Feegles. Happily, this one seems to be back on form (and it has a hare). There are few surprises as the plot unfolds, Pratchett relies on ideas he has used before, but he is the kind of author who does not need to worry about this (although too much information in the cover illustration could spoil it for others).

Tiffany Aching is growing up and faces yet another world shattering challenge. And wins. Of course. Which makes it all sound terribly dull. Far from it. Because this is a study of character. The setting is familiar both to Discworld fans and to readers new to his work. It is a small community. It may be quasi-medieval and rural, but the fact is most of us still live like that anyway, even in big cities in so-called democracies.

Nor is it just about an individual growing up, but that community. Because this book tackles terrorism and the ways in which it can be defeated. Unfortunately, this is a fantasy novel and the sensible approach to terror suggested is not played out in the real world where force and suppression make governments every bit as thuggish as the terrorist groups they spawned and now profess to oppose.

Tiffany knows that one answer is education. Open, unfettered, in which pupils are given the tools to think for themselves – sadly ironic at a time when in the UK education has become all about rote learning at a level sufficient to produce what was once called factory fodder. Except we no longer have factories. We no longer make. We no longer rely on ourselves and our immediate communities.

Or at least that’s how I read it. In other regards it is standard Pratchett fare. That is to say, superbly well written, superbly well constructed, humorous and serious in perfect balance, containing very real characters, and offering a wise insight into the world for which we should all be thankful.

Two Women Of London - Emma Tennant

2010-11-25T12:47:00.001Z

It is very clear from the beginning what this short novel is going to be about. Not difficult when two of the characters are Ms Jekyll and Mrs Hyde. Yet despite working from such a well-known source, Emma Tennant has produced a work that is very much her own and which retains tension throughout.

The Jekyll and Hyde theme is used to explore a community of women and the forms of feminism they represent. This is done with such a light touch that the story is allowed to make its point without once become a lecture. There isn’t time. The pace is pushed throughout via the notion of someone collating witness testimony after an event. In this way we get different perspectives on the story.

Ultimately, we know what has happened, but the why is what becomes intriguing. That and the community (which must surely have sprung from the same influences that inspired Moorcock’s Sporting Club Square stories), living in a part of London I knew before it became gentrified in the ‘80s.

As ever, with a Tennant novel, the construction and skill of the author is as much a joy as the content. The way in which she conveys atmosphere and draws character with such apparent effortlessness, the way in which there is never any sense of a supreme proponent showing off just how clever they are, the way in which old and new ideas are melded and used to cast a new light in old dark corners… Excellent.

The Doomsters - Ross Macdonald

2010-11-21T12:40:00.001Z

I had intended to add this to the ‘other books read this year list’, but The Doomsters deserves a special mention. The framework of the book is fairly typical Macdonald. It is as much about personal corruption as public corruption, the plot is complex without ever feeling contrived, and the characters are as always fascinating. Indeed, they drive this story - sometimes sedately, sometimes with complete disregard for the safety of others.

What makes this so special is the depth of the psychological insight, set out effortlessly through the story and its inhabitants. It is about insanity, regret, the infinite shades of morality that lie between those two impostors ‘good’ and ‘bad’. It is about how we deal with guilt; it is about the nature of guilt. It is also an exploration of existentialism. Not bad for a book that on the surface is a noirish thriller about murder.

The other thing that makes this book so special is that all the above is the result of the plot. The story is key. The situations, the events, and the characters present us with the ideas and discussions without once breaking the narrative. Events happen within a couple of days. And apart from quite natural discussions with a psychiatric social worker, the exposition is the story.

The Erasers - Alain Robbe-Grillet

2010-11-19T12:15:00.000Z

This was Robbe-Grillet’s first published novel and it broke new ground with enormous confidence. On the surface it is a detective novel of a peculiarly French kind - quiet, philosophical and so real you can feel the grit. If it was a movie it would be black and white. And the allusion to movies is apposite as Robbe-Grillet went on to be involved with some wonderful film projects as well.

So far so ordinary. Where Robbe-Grillet hacks through a hedge and builds a gate to a whole new field is in his technique. Given his success in film, it is valid to note that his written work is cinematic in the sense that we are given images, often repeated, often focussed on tiny detail, and from these we are allowed to construct a story. This is not so much abstract as cubist - we come back to scenes and details but always from slightly different perspectives. It is these that allow us a glimpse into the inner lives of the characters rather than straight descriptions of how characters are feeling.

Chronology is also dispensed with. It is not thrown out altogether; rather it is used in a way that reflects our inner view of the world. Whilst events may occur in a sequence, we very often revisit them when thinking of them, re-arranging events and our responses to them. Through this we are allowed to build up a comprehensive picture of what is happening in the novel.

Counter to the intuitive thought that a detective story becomes less enigmatic; this one becomes more complex as it goes on. The basic story is satisfying in itself, but the real joy is experiencing the way in which it unfolds through the minor detail and the slow composition of the whole.

If there is one problem I have with this particular translation it is that the translator clearly did not know the difference between a revolver and an automatic pistol. It makes no real difference to the story, but the two guns have radically different ways of working and it just bugged me. Perhaps I should brush up my extremely rusty French and read it in the original (although I fear if I brushed away that much rust there would be nothing of substance left to work with).

Highly recommended and an ideal place to start with Robbe-Grillet if you have never read his work before.

We Who Are About To... - Joanna Russ

2010-10-19T12:11:00.000+01:00

A small group of people are stranded on a planet after an accident. They have limited supplies and absolutely no hope of ever being rescued. It is a simple premiss and one that has been explored before to the point of cliché. But Russ turns the situation on its head. Because instead of a stirring tale of survival against all odds, of populating the planet, blah blah, we have a tale that probably reflects what would actually happen.

One of the group, the narrator, does not see why they should bother attempting to survive. She would much rather they made their peace with themselves and died. This immediately makes her the enemy of the others who cannot grasp such a realistic attitude. The book is the record of her thoughts spoken onto a dictating machine.

Although the end is inevitable, the route there is swift and shocking. Yet it also manages to be full of compassion, wit, and wisdom. And the portrayal of the disorientation of starvation is heartbreaking.

Oh that all books were this well written, this intelligent, this wise, this amusing. It could have descended into a morose sludge, with thick layers of false sentimentality. That we go through the whole traumatic experience with something approaching calm and not the least self-pity makes this all the more powerful.

My admiration is doubled by the fact that Russ (like Ballard and others of that ilk) has deliberately chosen science fiction as a home base and always stayed true to that through her writing life, despite the fact it has probably condemned her quite undeservedly to a ghetto. This is a literary work of great power. It speaks volumes about the human condition, about the relationship of the sexes, about attitudes to life, about how we each cope when we know that life is ending.

The writing is sharp, controlled, and full of subtle imagery that gives it a depth which makes a return reading just as rewarding as all the previous readings. If you haven’t read any science fiction because you have been taught to believe it is all pulp nonsense filled with two-dimensional characters and outrageous plots, this would be the book to dispel all those prejudices.

Kuldesak - Richard Cowper

2010-09-26T12:02:00.001+01:00

Whilst neither the premis of the book (humanity emerging from a computer ruled underground enclave after two thousand years) nor the denoument (computer destroying humanity for its own good outwitted by a new evolutionary trait) is original, the strength of the book lies in the sheer skill with which it is written.

Cowper builds his world with the most subtle of brush strokes and peoples it with realistic characters. He does not explain anything. Through the story of a small group of people, he reveals their world and their culture; and whilst his light is focussed on a small group, we see enough in the half lit glimpses on the periphery to fill in some gaps, but still leave us wondering.

Like his other work, this demonstrates that the best science fiction and fantasy is every bit as well written as ‘serious’ literature and deals with equally serious subjects (in this case what it means to be human).

Room 13 - Edgar Wallace

2010-09-22T12:53:00.001+01:00

Edgar Wallace is perhaps best known for co-writing King Kong and for ‘The Four Just Men’. For many writers that would be enough. It would certainly have brought in a decent amount of cash. But Wallace was famously prolific. 175 novels. Collections of short stories. Screenplays. He even directed. And died in debt - but that’s a whole other story.

It might be thought that someone who can produce so many novels would be turning out rubbish. Now, it is true that his work is not high art (however you care to describe that), but that doesn’t make it bad. He wrote thrilling yarns with strong storylines and interesting (if not always believable) characters. And sometimes he produced books and characters that are on a different level.

One such is Mr J G Reeder. Although he featured in only a handful of books (three novels and two short story collections) he has deservedly found a place in popular fiction as one of those characters that seem to exist independently of the pages in which they appear. Reeder is an enigmatic character. One can easily see him as a precursor of le Carré’s George Smiley. Apparently mild mannered, yet absolutely ruthless when the situation demands; intelligent; reclusive; and relying on his wits and a propensity for understanding the criminal mind.

Room 13 on the surface is a crime thriller, a bit of hokum to enliven the daily commute or unwind with after a dull day at the office or behind the shop counter. It is clear why his work was so popular. Escapism with a strong structure, sympathetic heroes, villains who get their just deserts, and enough intelligence for the reader to feel they have accomplished something more than a bit of time-wasting. That is a great combination for a best-seller.

Revolving around a story of forged money and revenge, the book rattles along with gusto. We are taken into the criminal underworld as imagined by the writer (and probably a long way from the truth). The action is leavened by ingenuity and enough exposition to colour in an otherwise sparsely sketched world. And through it all, almost like a haunting ghost, is the presence of J G Reeder. He doesn’t even appear until Chapter 11 and fades in and out of the narrative much as one would expect of someone who is several times described as on secret service.

And when the book is finished (with some unexpected twists), the character of J G Reeder remains. Despite only a few appearances, he does not fade as quickly as the other characters. There is a sense that he is still there, in the shadows, listening and watching.

This is a book (indeed the whole Reeder series) that any aspiring should read. They are instructive as to economy, plotting, characterisation, and pace. They are fun. And they have left us with one of fiction’s more intriguing characters.

The Colour Of Rain - Emma Tennant

2010-09-07T12:05:00.001+01:00

First published in 1963 under the pen name of Catherine Aydy, this is Tennant’s first novel. It recounts episodes in the lives of a group of privileged, empty people. A soap opera of childish adults, moving from one diversion to the next, pretending to be oh so civilized. But their world is like a sugar cage. Spun at random, colourless, flavourless and over sweet, brittle. It might be self-supporting, but it is obvious how easily it can break or dissolve.

All the activity is there, one suspects, to divert these people from the fact they stand on the edge of a great inner emptiness. If they did not fill their lives with the shiny baubles they can afford and the vacuous people who are all much the same, they would see the drop into nothing and like many when faced with such overwhelming existential horror; they would step off the edge.

Told largely through dialogue and a brittle prose that reflects the lives of its characters, this is an intriguing little novel. Although in some ways it records a very specific moment in time, that point when children stopped dressing like their parents, when music would influence a whole generation, when the ‘60s as a cultural phenomenon was about to begin, it also timeless. There are still people like this. The source of the money that allows such privileged living may have changed, but these people still flit like butterflies in their own little world. The horror of today is that they have such malign influence on the lives of others and in their own thoughtless way they fight to the death (usually someone else’s) to cling on to their privilege.

It is clearly a first novel from a time when novelists were expected to grow and were given time to do so by their publishers. But there is some fine writing here. Light, sharp, and full of an accurate social criticism that lifts the shiny surface and shows us what is beneath.

Romantic Egotist: An Unauthorised Biography of Jack Trevor Story - Brian Darwent

2010-09-03T19:06:00.001+01:00

It is difficult to know where to start with this book. I read it because of my love of Story’s work, but I have to say I found the experience to be loathsome. On a very basic level, the book is badly written. The style is pedestrian. It rambles and, as a result, it confuses. It hasn’t even been properly proofed as spelling mistakes and typographical errors abound. As a biography it fails on a basic level. It cites no sources and seems to contain nothing that could not be gleaned from Story’s fiction (always a dubious prospect for whilst Story was known to mine his own life extensively for material, it was fiction he was writing).

Whilst we are offered a vaguely chronological amble through Story’s life, it is not placed in any but the narrowest social context. Rather like placing something on its own in a display case. Having no idea of how usual or unusual were Story’s circumstances in his early life, for example, it ends up being presented as something of a freak show. A person’s formative years are important to an understanding of their life, especially if their life is considered worth documenting. Without that background, without that context, we are adrift from the very beginning.

And this continues. Jack Trevor Story was a writer. Yet much of the work is glossed over as if the author of the biography didn’t want to talk about the books and other writings beyond mentioning that they were written at a certain time. To me this rather misses the point, particularly as some of Story’s work is now difficult to get hold of. Even a dedicated collector like me has only a fraction of his output. And where the work is mentioned, I could not shake the feeling that it was being sneered at.

This was a missed opportunity on a grand scale. Jack Trevor Story was a complex man whose life was equally complex, not to say complicated. He was certainly a highly talented, not to say unique writer - a man who never let his work settle into a rut. One would think that the point of a biography would be to try to unravel the complexity and explore the writer’s life and his work. In the end, however, we are left with the impression the author gave up trying, that it was all too much like hard work, that he expected Story to dictate his life to him in a coherent fashion. Story certainly wasn’t happy with what he saw of it. Neither was I.

Story’s life and work is fascinating, as is the milieu in which he worked. The opportunity is there to explore how publishing worked for the jobbing writer in the ‘50s and ‘60s and beyond; how the television and film industry treated writers (and still does); how someone managed to keep writing and producing fresh material despite (and because of) the events in his life. The opportunity is also there to place Jack Trevor Story where he firmly belongs in the top rank of writers of the second half of the twentieth century. Sadly, all that has been wasted.

If you want to know about Jack Trevor Story, do not seek out this book. It would be a waste of effort and money. Seek out Jack Trevor Story’s books instead. There you will find writing of rare talent that outshines much of what passes for literature today; that is genuinely comic; and which reflects the chaos that is modern life.

Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse

2010-09-01T10:54:00.001+01:00

It is sometimes difficult returning to a book that you read in your late teens and have not re-read since then. There is a huge accretion of memory (often erroneous as memory can be) and emotion, especially when it is one of those books you recall as having had a profound effect. So much so that I went on to read whatever of Hesse I could find.

Returning to this, I am struck by two things that I probably didn’t consider on the original reading. The first is the language. My German has never been good enough to tackle something like this so I rely on translation. That means I do not know if it is the original or the translation that is so stiff-necked, so formal, but it simply felt at odds with the subject of the book. The structure is by no means standard for a novel. Hesse is happy to play with that. It seems unlikely he would be so in thrall to his native language that he would not know how to match the language to the various moods of the book.

The second is that for me, this will always be a book associated with adolescence and a flowering of my creative side. To my adult self it seems a juvenile work. Interesting, but a bit embarrassing, a bit too conscious of its literariness. This does not mean I do not like it. Every work as ambitious as this must be allowed a level of ‘roughness’ because it is venturing into places no one has been before.

Although a novel this stems from an age before writing courses and professionalisation of the art dictated current ‘axioms’. It is a novel of ideas. Whilst things happen (although not very much), the work is more interested in the development and exploration of ideas. The plot, such as it is, is a very loose framework on which to hang the discourse. Characters are almost irrelevant.

When I was reading the end section I was put in mind of the TV show The Prisoner (the original, not the appalling ‘remake’). That too had its faults, but it was nonetheless intriguing and explored many of the themes to be found in Steppenwolf - about identity, about being trapped, about escape, about trying to make sense and impose a pattern on an essentially chaotic world. And ending with a seemingly bizarre series of surreal events from which ideas and messages can be constructed to your heart’s content.

I am glad I took the time to revisit, and I would recommend it to younger readers as it is a book that anyone concerned with the nature of our inner lives should read; but it should be read early when it has time to imprint those essential messages, especially those about the way in which the life of the mind cannot be sustained without recourse to the feeding of the body and the senses.

The Moving Target - Ross Macdonald

2010-08-11T20:01:00.000+01:00

As someone who much enjoys the work of Hammett and Chandler, it seemed only right that at some stage I would seek out Macdonald’s books. That it has taken so long is a bit of a mystery. I knew he was considered the heir to Hammett and Chandler, but somehow I had never got round to reading any of his work. It’s something I’ll be putting right in the near future.

Although not his first novel, this is the first of a series to feature his private eye Lew Archer. Archer is cast in the same mould as others of his ilk. He has been a policeman, served in Intelligence during the Second World War, has a broken marriage, is something of a tough guy, but is not as tough as he acts. Because his inner world is available to us through the use of first person narrative.

In the same West coast settings as Hammett and Chandler, Macdonald explores the same territory and uses the same settings, yet we have a view of the world that is from a slightly different perspective. This is partly due to the fact that Macdonald takes up the reins in the post-war era. I’m looking forward to his work written in the 60s to see how he observes the social changes of the time.

In The Moving Target, he notes how some men who flourished in a combat situation had trouble readjusting to civilian life and often fell into trouble or made a concerted move into a life of crime. This is introduced as a natural part of the story (a kidnap caper that goes wrong and exposes the ways in which upright citizens can be corrupted by the influence and presence of the corrupt).

By the time Macdonald wrote this book, he was had already proved himself as a writer. It is somewhat lacking in variations of pace. In part that is the race-against-time element of the story, but a few moments to draw breath would have produced greater contrast for the tension. Apart from that, this is a slick novel that pays great attention to detail, not just in terms of plot and character, but in the mechanics of writing as well.

It’s always a joy to find a ‘new’ author whose books one enjoys. I can see lots of pleasurable reading ahead.

Dance Your Way To Psychic Sex - Alice Turing

2010-08-05T00:01:00.000+01:00

This book is something of a literary earthquake. From the very beginning you are aware of a fault line; you know that in the depths there are tensions building. And as with all earthquake zones, the eye moves from place to place assessing the safe spots, the danger points, the escape routes, all in the knowledge that when the earth moves, all bets are off. Because when and where an earthquake is triggered and with what ferocity is wholly unpredictable.

Here, the seismic rumblings are of a personal nature. As the book opens, we follow Henrietta into the epicentre. And already we can feel the coiled energy that will release and turn everybody’s life upside down and inside out, knowing they will have to cope with a world full of aftershocks as they survive in the ruins and start the long process of rebuilding.

Such a novel could be unremittingly gloomy. Happily for us, it is not. The themes of love, loss, betrayal, faith, and illusion are handled well. There is no moralising, no sense that the author has an axe to grind, merely that she has an insight she wishes to share and the talent to share it in such an interesting and entertaining way. It treats serious subjects with sensitivity, yet it manages also to be comic. There are no knockabout routines, no custard pies in the face. The humour and the comedy are integral to the characters and to the situation – and much of what happens grows out of the characters in an entirely natural way.

Indeed, the book put me in mind of Jack Trevor Story, for it is a somewhat surreal yet convincing tale populated by characters who, for all their oddities and intensities, are wholly believable and deftly drawn. These are characters not always in control of their fate, who view the world with a bewildered eye, but who manage to survive. Swept away by the craze of Psychic Dancing, we are offered glimpses into the world of stage magicians and mentalists, as well as the lives of those caught out by success.

The author also does the reader the honour of treating them as intelligent. No spoon feeding of pap on plastic spoons. Rather, we are fed morsels of the best quality with a spoon that… Well, maybe there is no spoon. The writing is smooth and clear, like a good whisky; because it is also intoxicating. The story is well constructed and complex without resorting to tricksiness. The resolution is satisfying even if, like real life, all the ends are not neatly tied in a bow.

There were a couple of times I found myself wondering why it had been written in the present tense. I normally find this difficult to cope with, but the pace and content soon made me forget about it. It did however put me in mind of a film script and made me realise what a great television series this would make.

If you like an intelligent read that is both thoughtful and entertaining; if you like a book that is well written; if you like something a little out of the ordinary; then I suggest you buy this book. You’ll be doing yourself a favour and you’ll be supporting a writer who deserves much greater recognition.

The Bad Sister - Emma Tennant

2010-07-27T16:05:00.000+01:00

Often billed as a retelling of James Hogg’s masterwork, it is a great deal more than that, and to suggest otherwise seems to me to belittle what the author has achieved. Indeed, this is Emma Tennant at her very best. Confident, intelligent, and searching, she has produced a novel of great simplicity and enormous power.

The simplicity lies not in the story which is an interweaving of many layers, but in the telling. A lesser author would have made a hash of trying to keep so many narratives moving forward in such a way. Yet we are never lost in these layers, just as we are never lost in the mysteries. Nothing is explained, yet we are never left behind, because the author paints such a convincing picture.

The narrative is tight, tense, and slips in and out of the surreal in a way that many so-called magic realist writers have never managed. Such seamless writing is a joy to read; the use of such techniques enhancing the story. And there is extra joy in the fact we are left to engage with the story at our own level. A fantastical show is put on for our delight, both entertaining and thought provoking. How far we wish to go in looking behind the scenery is up to us. The door is there should we choose, but it is never once pushed at us.

Jane’s journey is one of feverish nightmare, never certain what is dream, what is hallucination, and what is real. Her encounters, her memories, and her actions move in and out of these different realms. And the end of the book takes us out of the quintessential urban setting with its noise and business back to the wilds where one can feel the cool, green, damp and the loneliness that lies at the heart of this sad tale.

Buy. Read. Marvel.

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction - Jonathan Culler

2010-07-17T13:53:00.000+01:00

Like other books in this series, this is surprisingly comprehensive for such a short text – especially given the complexity of the subject. The author takes an unusual approach to the subject, leaving an explanation of various schools of theory to an appendix. Instead, he concentrates on questions and approaches that are shared by these various schools. In this way, he is able to introduce the subject in a way suitable for complete beginners without compromising depth. You come away from this book with a grounding in the subject sufficient to move to more comprehensive introductions, especially those that look in depth at the various schools. For that, this book is to be recommended.

On the other hand, as someone who knows something about the subject, the book simply entrenched my own thoughts about literary theory. But I’m a writer and I have never really understood the vast edifice of literary criticism and theory that has grown up around works of fiction. To me it seems like a Gormenghastian labyrinth encrusted about some simpler core whose goal was to make the reading of works of literature a more pleasurable experience through the medium of a greater understanding of the text. It often seems to me that the subject of literary theory is no longer literature, but literary theory.

For a writer, these things are a distraction. The many different ways in which people pull a work apart makes the assumption they know better, that their view of the world is superior, and gives the impression that somehow they need to (a) find a sense of humour and (b) get a life. These are books they are discussing. They may be important. Some works certainly change the course of history. But the extremes of literary theory treat literature (when it remembers that is the subject) as the be all and end all. This ignores the fact that a huge proportion of the world’s population cannot read, and that of those who can, only a minority read literature for anything other than pleasure.

So, if you are interested, this is a good book to get you started. But don’t take it seriously. By all means think about the things you read and the assumptions that the author seems to be making about the world. But remember also to read for pleasure – elevating small sections of literary output is to create divisions that should not be there. It also contributes to the somewhat absurd situation in which works now touted as ‘literary’ by publishers are mostly vacuous. Many works of the past now considered canonical were popular works. We have, through the literary industry, elevated them to an imaginary strata fit only for the intelligentsia; those in the know; those with the wit to ‘understand’ them properly. People should be allowed to approach books for their own reasons and pleasures, not those dictated by others. Readers should certainly have the basic tools beyond an ability to read, but the relationship they have with a work or with an author should be personal.

Visitants - Randolph Stow

2010-07-09T11:32:00.000+01:00

In perfect tune with the setting (Papua New Guinea), this seems to be a languorous work. Each of the main participants in the story take their turns to tell short fragments, building a complex, multi-coloured, mosaic. This too adds to the atmosphere, painting a picture of life in tropical climes, hopping from island to island, walking through the humid air, taking everything at a gentle pace.

But this is a deceptive novel. Using a real event as its starting point (the Boianai Mission UFO sightings of June 1959), the book explores ideas of what it is to be alien, to be a visitant, the effect of different cultures on one another, and how that impacts on individuals, especially those living in an alien environment. That said, this is not science fiction. The UFO event is a trigger, but everything else is very much down to earth and part of everyday life.

The characters are beautifully drawn; all the subtle detail extracted through the relationships each has with the others in the small communities through which they move. And whilst the book moves at a gentle pace it soon becomes clear that there are strong, deadly undercurrents. The notion of alienness runs at many levels. This is made especially clear by one of the characters toward the end and the way in which this reflected in the events is a masterful piece of story-telling.

It is a book that stays in the mind for a long time, with images clinging like exotic and heady perfume. Deeply moving, in places shocking, there is an alienness in the almost clinical observation of people and events. Yet the book manages at the same time to be warm and sympathetic. Well worth reading.

The Entropy Exhibition - Colin Greenland

2010-07-04T11:42:00.001+01:00

Between 1964 and 1973, the magazine New Worlds came under the editorship of Michael Moorcock. With a change at the helm, the magazine took off in a different direction. It wasn’t an about face as some have claimed any more than it was sudden, but there was a definite air of new direction and a sense that there might actually be a destination to the somewhat rambling pleasure cruise.

Originally a science fiction magazine, Moorcock encouraged the development of new kinds of writing. Science fiction was the starting place, but he (along with many others) was deeply dissatisfied with what science fiction had become – dull and so cut off from the mainstream it might as well have been on another planet (called 'The 1930s').

The time, of course, was ripe for revolution. Set firmly in a milieu of experiment and exploration that saw a blossoming of music, art, and socio-political concerns, it was inevitable that literature would also undergo an upheaval. That it cam from this particular quarter is something that most literary critics and theorists still fail to understand or acknowledge.

Very often, the change in literature at this period is attributed to the ‘gritty realism’ of the ‘angry young men’. Yet this was not a revolution. It stayed well within the bounds of what had gone before yet was feted as a step forward into ‘daring’ territory by people who probably thought not buttoning your collar under your tie was an act of revolution.

To the dismay of entrenched hard sci fi fans, a new tranche of New Worlds authors tore everything up (sometimes literally) and started again. From scratch. They questioned everything. Many of the experiments in writing they tried didn’t work, but they were exuberant, interesting, and for me it was a real joy to read them. They were keeping pace with the music and art scenes (which most of the rest of literature was not), they were political, and they dived headlong into inner space and came back with trophies and reports stranger than any that had ever been brought back from outer space. And they changed literature.

Greenland’s book concentrates on three of the core writers – Aldiss, Ballard, and Moorcock. And in discussing their work, he explores what motivated the revolution (ideas about entropy sit at the heart of much of the work that was written by these and other contributors); how it developed; how it became saddled with a label none of them wanted or agreed with (New Wave); what they achieved; and what the coterie of New Worlds writers really were.

One thing they were not, nor did they ever pretend to be was a ‘movement’. The whole point of what was happening at New Worlds was that serious writers were being allowed to experiment and find a genuine new voice for their writing. Science fiction was the ideal basis for this (and it is gratifying that all the great writers that grew out of New Worlds and rode the shock waves like crazed surfers – Ballard, Moorcock, Aldiss, Bayley, Zoline, Russ, Sladek, Harrison, et al) have never once turned their backs on their roots (unlike many so-called literary writers who have plundered the worst of sci fi for ideas and then had hissy fits when they got busted). Given that each writer involved with this was looking for their own voice, they could never be classed as a movement. The writing styles, the content of their work, the things they were experimenting with and trying to achieve were so diverse, differed so much from writer to writer that call them a movement is absurd. One only has to read statements some of them have made over the years to see how different they were as writers.

Greenland’s exploration of this is insightful and well written (and desperately difficult to get hold of). It casts light on what is often dismissed as a sideshow. Yet this really was a breeding ground for literary revolution. If you don’t believe that, then look out for a copy of this book, and then look out for Ballard’s The Atrocity Exhibition; Aldiss’s Report on Probability A; Moorcock’s two Glogauer books – Behold the Man and Breakfast in the Ruins; and the Moorcock edited New Worlds an Anthology published by Flamingo. They might not be entirely to your taste but it will demonstrate that these are writers who have immeasurably enriched the literary scene and who, in some cases, were so far ahead of the scene in the ‘60s and ‘70s that everyone else is still struggling not just to catch up, but to find any sign of the route they took.

Albert Rides Again - Jack Trevor Story

2010-06-26T11:11:00.001+01:00

Horace Fenton Spurgeon meets Albert Argyle; Story meets Blake (Sexton); past meets present; reality meets surreality; and the collision spills out into a metafiction of absurd humour that is so far off the wall, the wall can no longer be seen. This is, in fact, classic Story, recapturing (in 1990) something of the lighter hearted mood of his novels of the ‘60s. Yet the darker period through which he had travelled never completely lost its hold on his work. There is a harder edge beneath the romp.

Story ties together the chaotic lives of his two major ‘creations’ through the medium of Claude Marchmont, a tally man stepping into the shoes of the deceased Albert Argyle and inheriting all of Albert’s troubles. But the background story, offering a different perspective on A Company of Bandits (one of Story’s Sexton Blake novels) and mixing in various other criminal concerns, is just a vehicle. The true heart of this novel are the characters who, as in many of Story’s novels, are both caricatures and very real at one and the same time.

With a deft hand we are shown the chaos of human life and the way in which we muddle through against all the odds, how we are driven by some very basic concerns, how we find warmth in the dark from very simple pleasures.

Yet this work does something else. Quite apart from its wonderful character portraits and its cast of strange extras, it is a metafiction that wanders with ease between fiction and reality in a way that would make some ‘serious’ ‘literary’ novelists weep with envy. We move between layers of fiction (Albert Argyle had something of Story in him, but his books were as much a portrait of an age as anything else; Horace Spurgeon Fenton was a lightly fictionalised self portrait; we find mention of work that Story produced for television and film, as well as his novels), we move between past and present, we move inside and outside of the author’s head.

At no time, however, does Story lose sight of the fact he is writing an entertainment. The structure (in form of the story about a train robbery) is there and well constructed; the characters are (in terms of the novel) believable; and the whole thing zips along at a wonderful pace. You barely have time to draw breath; events are often confusing because of the pace although the reader is never cheated. If you treat the novel with respect and allow Story’s style to unfold, you are rewarded with an intelligent, exuberant, and first class piece of writing.

The Female Man - Joanna Russ

2010-06-23T20:41:00.000+01:00

The Female Man is a truly astonishing novel. It first appeared in 1975 and I have since worn out two copies. This is my first reading of a new copy and it still surprises me, not to mention the awe and jealousy I also always feel. Awe that such a superb work can be written; jealousy that such a superb work can be written and I know I’ll never come anywhere near.

Words like ‘visionary’, ‘powerful’, ‘classic’, ‘significant’ have all been applied to this work. And they are all true. If you have not heard of the book it is probably because it also has two other labels: ‘feminist’ and ‘science fiction’. Yes it is both, because at heart it is about the experience of women and it uses the idea of alternate worlds to make its point. But it transcends those labels in a way that makes them almost irrelevant. Only almost, because Joanna Russ, thankfully, has never shied away from be a writer of sf.

In the novel four alternative versions of the same person are drawn from their four alternative worlds. And that’s about it. There are subplots, but the vehicle itself is more than enough to carry the dark wit that is used to explore what it means to be a woman. The different worlds offer different perspectives, such that we can also conclude that rather than four worlds we are offered a glimpse into four archetypes, jostling for room in a single mind.

We see a world that never climbed out of the 1930s and never shed the psychic straightjacket that most women wore throughout their lives. In another we see a world where men have long since died off (and it is no utopia). A third world is torn apart by a literal war of the sexes. And sadly my dull description does none of it any justice. Because Russ is an impeccable stylist, some who has a real power over words, someone who makes them run as smooth and warm as honey, as dark and rich as chocolate, as sharp and powerful as a storm.

The intricate weaving of the four tales contrasts and compares the experience of the women in their different worlds. The sparse action allows both character and ideas to have a life of their own that is every bit as intriguing and suspenseful as any action thriller. The writing is assured, subtle; at times laugh out loud funny, at others the sharpness leaves you bleeding.

It is also a work of metafiction. The author is present (she is one of the characters), and we are treated within the text to some accurate observations on how the book (and feminism in general) is and will be greeted by all the usual suspects. Yet this is no vitriolic polemic; no rant. It is a clever and compassionate piece of writing; a superb piece of science fiction; a well argued work of feminist philosophy; and to my mind one of the truly great novels of the twentieth century.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases - Vandermeer & Roberts [eds]

2010-06-21T16:36:00.001+01:00

Not the sort of book you’d read at a single sitting, this is a truly eccentric work. The premiss is simple. Invite a number of distinguished writers to compose an entry to a medical dictionary of imaginary diseases. The result? Something that is playful, hilarious and deeply disturbing, sometimes at one and the same time.

It is also extremely insightful, not just of the contributing authors (for in their contributions we see snapshots of their preoccupations and their unique view of the world), but also of the modern world. Download Syndrome (a compulsion to record everything along with the use of appliances for thinking and communicating) sounds like a very real Syndrome to me. Printer’s Evil sounds equally plausible – although I suppose it helps to have a slightly twisted mind.

If you like curios. If you like things that are just plain odd. Very odd. The very essence of odd. This is a book worth looking out for. However, it is not recommended for those who cannot read a medical dictionary without immediately being certain they have every symptom described therein. For such folk, reading this volume would be disastrous on a grand scale.

Tank Girl - Hewlett & Martin

2010-06-14T14:29:00.001+01:00

Guaranteed to reawaken those fantasies of being a mutant kangaroo.

Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee

2010-06-14T14:27:00.001+01:00

During my teenage years I rode the train to and from school. Twice a day I passed the spot where Virginia Woolf drowned. Even given the changes since those dark days, the contrast always gave me pause for thought. I used to cycle and walk out that way as well, enjoying the peace, the wildlife, the beauty.

Naturally, I looked at Woolf’s writing; which was enough for me. The woman was a genius with words. I have since revisited her books a number of times, each exploration revealing more about her and more about me. Yet I could never quite wrap my head around the way her life closed in on her so acutely she could think of only way out.

Having now read Hermione Lee’s superb biography I now begin to understand. It is only a beginning, but that is usually the best place to start. I am not a big reader of biographies, especially of writers. As one myself, I know that the great bulk of their lives involves sitting at a table putting words on paper. Not very interesting in itself. And in many cases, their life is irrelevant to the finished product. But when the writer uses their own life and experience as the basis for their exploration of the human condition, then their life is often key to their interpretation.

The other reason I do not often read biographies is that they are usually dull reading. The author either sticks to recounting a series of events or tries to analyse them and ends up making a pigs ear of the silken purse they were first handed. Hermione Lee avoids all the pitfalls. Yes, she recounts the events of Woolf’s life. Yes, she attempts an analysis. But she manages both with great style, with vitality, sympathy, and considerable insight.

At no time does she shy away from Virginia Woolf’s difficult side (which Woolf herself was all too often painfully aware of), yet she treats this with an even-handed approach. Some of it can be explained, but people are often what they are and we have to take them as a whole. Just as we have to take the harrowing episodes in her early life along with the desperately dark inner turmoil that would squeeze the joy out of her life.

Unlike most biographies that leave me feeling like I know a character better, this one has left me feeling I know a real person a lot better. It is a model of biographical writing: scholarly and inclusive, warm and caring. I no longer travel past where Virginia Woolf died. I do not know if I will ever return to that part of the world. But I do know the unquiet ghost of my own lack of understanding will have begun to fade. I hope Virginia Woolf’s spirit has found peace because she has made my world a better place.

Queen Of Stones - Emma Tennant

2010-06-01T11:45:00.001+01:00

This novel chronicles the ill-fated events that occur when a party of girls on a sponsored walk become separated from the world by a heavy fog. Set in Dorset, we follow the young girls as they wander ending, by a circuitous route, on the Isle of Portland. Cut off from ‘civilising’ norms, the girls quickly enter a dreamtime state in which they must provide all the explanations for events from their own limited pool of experience. The result is a potent mix of fairy tale, half understood (if keenly felt) observations of the adult world, and all the bits of knowledge that have yet to find a framework from which to hang.

All the normal tensions between the girls become exaggerated and all their obsessions become heightened. Alliances form and reform at great speed. The thin veneer of respectable behaviour is quickly stripped away. If this feels familiar, it is clear from the parallels in the book that Tennant is visiting old ground, but with a fresh eye. Applying a Carteresque sensibility to the question posed by Golding, we see young children becoming adults without the wherewithal to cope - physically or emotionally.

The episodes of what happened are interspersed in the novel with commentary by several adults. One is the author. Another is a doctor who has made a poor and outdated psychological assessment of one of the girls. These calm, reasoned voices contrast with the dreamy, chaotic, emotional journey of the children. They are dull and flawed; just as flawed (if not more so) than the elemental girls.

A sense of magic, of dream, and of raw emotional power, imbues this work. It throws out many more questions than it answers and remains the better for it. Any attempt to explain what happened (beyond that of the clearly flawed adult observers in the book) would have drained the work of any power. Readers of the book are treated as intelligent. The language, as ever with Tennant, is sharp and sparse, glimpses of events as the fog shifts, vignettes lit but sudden sunshine and just as quickly hidden.

I am not familiar with Tennant’s later work (something I intend to rectify), but revisiting her earlier work is enlightening. Based on those early works alone, she is for me one of the great writers in English, head and shoulders above the all the usual (male) names that get trotted out and laved with adulation.

Inverted World - Christopher Priest

2010-05-25T11:39:00.000+01:00

On re-reading this I remembered why I did not keep what Christopher Priest books I had. This is because, in common with his other work, he has taken a single interesting idea and woven around it what is the dullest book I have read in a very long time.

The central conceit is of an energy crisis that brings modern civilization to ruin. One man’s answer is the discovery of a means of producing energy that involves putting a very large research facility on caterpillar tracks to follow an energy field as it migrates around the earth. All well and highly implausible - it is, after all, science fiction. The problem with this solution is that the energy field alters human perception of the world.

Two hundred years later, the research facility is still crawling along and we see its final days through the eyes of one of its inhabitants. And here it all falls apart. The notion of an inverted world is fine. It would make a good short story or even stretch to a novella. But a novel requires a great deal more than the working out of a single idea. For one thing it needs good characters. And this book singularly fails to deliver.

It fails on other points as well. There is no tension. The collapse of a small, fanatical society; conflict between those on the moving ‘city’ and the lands it passes through; interpersonal relationships are all painted in two dimensions with a prose that plods along at the same speed as the city itself. Which is slow. And we are told everything, jumping from first person to third person for no apparent reason.

This recent edition has an introduction by Adam Roberts (I had to look him up) which itself reads like a pastiche of a dull literary essay. It earnestly explains how clever the book is and all the uses of inversion to be found therein. Frankly, it felt like it was trying too hard to convince. Who, I am not sure. Not me, for one.

Report On Probability A - Brian Aldiss

2010-05-17T11:51:00.000+01:00

It is clear that Aldiss’s self-proclaimed ‘anti-novel’ owes a great deal to a number of influences. Perhaps the most obvious and openly acknowledged is that of Samuel Beckett. Aldiss has a character named Watt, and the novel has a strong affinity with Beckett’s early work. We can also see something of Pinter in there, along with Robbe-Grillet. Yet Aldiss manages to stay out of the glare of such luminaries and create a shining work of his very own.

A house in a town is under close observation. In each of the three outbuildings is a character known only by an initial: G, S, and C; although these probably represent Gardener, Secretary, and Chauffeur as these seem to have been the capacity in which each of these characters was once employed. They each observe the house whilst trying to remain concealed. This gives each of them a limited viewpoint.

There are occasional forays across the road to the café opposite the house. This is owned by Watt. And that is all. Events are minimal. The observations and situation of each of the observers is given in minute and obsessive detail. In the process we learn other details and, in particular, our attention is constantly drawn to Holman Hunt’s painting ‘The Hireling Shepherd’ - also described in minute (although sometimes invented) detail.

Clearly this is a book about perception and how we can never see the whole of things; a book about obsession; a book about interpretation. This alone makes it a metafiction as there is a tendency when reading to try to interpret and make what you can of the limited information on offer. Yet the reference to Watt may also point to Beckett’s dictum ‘no symbols where none intended’.

The overall tone of the book is of a dream. The descriptions of the town and the bizarre snippets we are afforded as characters cross the road (a bloody bicycle carried on a stretcher, for example) give everything an air of unreality, drifting between one’s own psyche and that of the worlds created by the likes of Beckett, O’Brien, Robbe-Grillet - intense, enclosed, mundane, yet mysterious.

For me, this is an important work of literature. So why is it ignored by the mainstream? Why do we not see this book included in discussions of absurdist or surrealist literature? Why is it not cited in discussions of the anti-novel? Well, my edition tells me helpfully on the cover that it is a work of science fiction. And to be sure there are some short interpolated passages in which people from different dimensions observe what is happening in the main part of the novel. But they add nothing to the story and I (along with others I have discussed this with) suspect they were put in to make sure the novel made it into print. If you do get hold of a copy, ignore the bits in italics. Read it as a piece of highly-accomplished and extremely intelligent piece of literature.

The Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield

2010-05-09T13:12:00.000+01:00

Although I have read some of Katherine Mansfield’s stories before, I have never had them collected in a single volume. And what a volume. All her collections (including those published posthumously) and all the unfinished stories. In a single volume. For £2.00. For this, Wordsworth Editions should be applauded (and there are plenty of other reasons for applause where they are concerned).

Mansfield’s work is highly influential. Rightly considered a major proponent of the modern short story, she excelled in a form that is much used but rarely perfected. Her language is luminous, and like light it opens up whole areas often otherwise in shadow, and does so without weight. We are offered glimpses of things we might not otherwise see, of emotions and relationships that would otherwise stay hidden, yet we are never left with the sense of that the author is trying to make a point.

Not all of her stories work. Some feel incomplete and others rely on attitudes that have been irrevocably changed by events. Some are a bit too well crafted and there is an immediacy in the unfinished works that has been smoothed from some of the finished works. However, even the least of her stories are so superbly crafted they are worth reading for the simple pleasure of experiencing language that dances.

The other thing that Mansfield’s work demonstrates is that short stories are an art form in their own right. To find the balance between brevity and depth; to leave the reader feeling that have been treated to something complete that could have been presented in no other way is a great deal more exacting than many believe. And anyone who is serious about writing short stories really should read Katherine Mansfield. It would be £2.00 well spent.

Hotel De Dream - Emma Tennant

2010-05-09T13:11:00.000+01:00

In a seedy, decaying boarding house in London, the lodgers dream. Not exactly the best pitch you may have heard for a novel. But the Westringham and its locale are the sort of places one would wish to escape. And for many, dreams are their only refuge. Private worlds where they are in control. Sadly, for these lodgers, even that is denied them. Because the dreams begin to merge and they each other wandering in and out of their sanctuaries, disrupting events and fraying the edges of reality.

Emma Tennant handles all this with wit and a deliciously dark humour. Like an 80% chocolate, it is creamy, strong, with that bitter edge, but ultimately so satisfying you just have to have more. And it is a chocolate with an extra ingredient, because into the mix is thrown an author having problems with her characters who are plotting to kill her. And here, too, the demarcation between reality and fiction shows signs of breaking down. Because the below stairs staff (a vile, Beckettian character called Cridge) seems to be both real and a character from a book. Which of course he is.

It will be clear from previous observations that I enjoy surreal work that refuses to stay firmly on the page. Stories that leak into the real world, whether they are surreal like this or alternative histories, offer a great platform for exceptional stories as well as introducing questions about the nature of reality, about what makes us human. Entertainment and philosophy in one glorious package. And when produced by someone with a mischievous sense of humour, you end up with a book like this - one that proves that the intellectual can be fun; that entertainment need not be vacuous.

A Tapestry Of Time - Richard Cowper

2010-04-27T14:01:00.000+01:00

Like the first volume of 'The White Bird of Kinship' trilogy, this one is in two sections. The first concludes the story begun in the previous volume. It is an altogether darker episode in which prophecies come to pass, but not in the way envisaged by those who had transmitted them. Indeed, the end of the tale that began with the death of the Boy-piper can be taken as a defeat of all the hopes and aspirations of those who fought and threw off the strangling hand of the Orthodox Church.

The second part of the book moves us forward another 700 years and tells of two scholars who set out to discover what really happened all those centuries before - unpicking myth from fact and trying to decide just where (if at all) the difference lies. This acts a gentle counter-balance to the first part and wakens the possibility that the original vision of Kinship might finally be realised.

Written beautifully, as ever, this final book concludes the story in wonderful style and opens up many of the layers that were packed into earlier parts of the book. Not only do we have a complete story of religious revolution, we have a much more complex and ambitious investigation into how religions are shaped, often by disciples whose view of things are subtly different to those they follow.

This acts a commentary on the way in which Christianity, in particular, became the creation of St Paul who set the orthodoxies. In these books, Kinship becomes something other than originally envisioned under the guiding hand of Francis. But we have something deeper than that, because the books are circular. The scholars at the end may well have been the ones who wrote the stories down in the form we have just read them, so we are, at the end, confronted with the further possibility of yet another layer of interpretation - the intention of which is to restore the original vision.

Cowper has produced something quite profound here. A well written and gripping fantasy story that explores religious and philosophical questions without ever losing sight of the wonderful characters he has created. They drive the story rather than being stock figures designed to suit the author’s needs. And he has created a world without once feeling the need to expound on his world-building and explain it all. We experience the world as its inhabitants experience it; we know what they know and are therefore allowed to be confronted by its wonders and horrors without having a tedious tour guide whispering in our ear.

If you enjoy fantasy - this is a must read. If you want to write fantasy - this is a must read.

Dying, In Other Words - Maggie Gee

2010-04-21T10:05:00.001+01:00

I had not heard of this author’s work until a few weeks ago when I read an article in praise of her novels. I did some research and bought this, her first. And I am so glad I did for this is a deliciously cryptic novel in which Gee’s confessed influences shine through strongly. This is not a bad thing because, like all good authors, Gee has used those influences to help forge her own vision of the world. The writing is poetic and intense, yet never strays from the very simple need to tell the stories that surround this single event.

Moira Penny, a writer, is found dead one morning on the cold pavement outside her attic lodgings. A simple starting point that could have led to an upmarket thriller, Gee takes a sideways step into an alternate reality. All through the book we learn of the other inhabitants of the lodging house and of the crescent in which the house is situated. They are obsessional, deluded, and bizarre - almost to the point of cartoonish. Yet this is just the surface. Because as we begin to delve into the lives of these people through delicately painted vignettes that echo with madness, we are always conscious of the empty attic room where the mad person is traditionally locked away. And from there, the sound of typing clacks through the whole story.

One by one the characters are written out of the story. Dying, in other words. Flickering out like the flames of birthday candles. And as the novel progresses it becomes increasingly surreal, steering a twisting course along the borders of strange worlds that remain rooted very firmly in our own. The juxtaposition of mundane realities such as milk machines (a beautiful period touch) and the strange mental struggle of one of the lodgers who struggles to disentangle her own confused thoughts about whether she was a child or had a child make the work both odd and very real.

The whole piece is circular in nature. Whilst it builds on the opening fact that Moira Penny is dead, by the time you reach the end, all assumptions have been explored and subtly destroyed. We are left with the notion that the dead woman wrote the book after she died, that she never existed, that the end is the beginning and the journey is one that ‘begins’ in madness and ‘ends’ with the clarity of death. For me, the very best of the work came at the end of the book, the last of a collection of shorter pieces, perhaps written by the now dead Moira Penny. Beckettian in its scope and power, this is an extraordinary and visionary piece of writing to cap an extraordinary book.

One Last Mad Embrace - Jack Trevor Story

2010-04-16T12:06:00.000+01:00

Oh, what a glorious book. It starts as comedy, drifts into farce, and ends as a surreal, almost poignant reminiscence. Along the way we meet a cast of characters already seen in his previous two Horace Fenton books. Most of them seem, at first meeting, to be larger than life, yet that is more to with Story’s ability to view real people through a magnifying lens that brings them closer and exposes their foibles.

There is also a story that drives the characters - a typically convoluted crime into which Horace Fenton has been dragged. Yet for all his apparent otherworldly innocence he projects, we are allowed to see a more rounded picture of Fenton. And that is one of the great delights of this work; the skill of the author propelling what could be dismissed as a comic romp into much more literary realms. The first person narrative is so smooth and realistic, you are not conscious of the novelistic conventions unless you look for them. It is not helped by having a world-weary writer as the narrator, because he knows all the tricks and conventions, he knows how to subvert the, and he knows how to throw you off the trail by talking about them in his narrative.

The three Horace Fenton books are the closest we get to autobiography from Story. It is often quoted that the more outrageous the incidents in these books, the more likely they are to be true. It is certainly true that Story led a chaotic and amiable life, always out of pocket, always generous, always working. Yet we should never confuse the reality with the fiction. Story may have used his life for material, but Horace Fenton is not Jack Story. Well... not quite.

If you like a comic novel which is a little less than PC; one that is full of warmth, with an eye to things that really count; this is for you. It’s not necessary to read the other two first (Hitler Needs You and I Sit In Hanger Lane), but it will certainly make the experience all the more enjoyable. And if you are a writer, these are a master class in smooth storytelling. All the more annoying that only the first of the three is currently in print. The others are to be found if you are prepared to look and be patient - a sad state of affairs when print on demand could make such wonderful books available to a whole new audience.

A Dream Of Kinship - Richard Cowper

2010-04-11T10:01:00.001+01:00

It is often the case that middle books of trilogies are extended back fill, something to act as a bridge between the first and last parts. A Dream Of Kinship avoids this; indeed, it doesn’t even come close to it because it strikes off in a different direction. And this, allied with Cowper’s ability to tell a sweeping epic through the very intimate story of a boy growing up, is a true indication of the author’s skill.

Taking the story forward from the first book, we follow Jane’s child from birth in view of the burning ruins of Corlay through to his coming of age. The events that surround him touch mostly on the fortunes of First Kingdom and the influence he has on events. Through this we learn of the wider story, the spread of Kinship and the collapse of an ever more aggressive Church.

Great events occur and people play their part, but Cowper knows the value of character in making a story more alive, more intimate. The emotional connection he forges with the reader makes the story much more believable; much more than many fantasies that invest thousands of pages in world building only to people it with cartoon like characters who act as ciphers to carry the story forward.

To many, Cowper seems slow, yet his storytelling is full of rich detail and beautifully evoked scenes. He builds a world and shows it through the very real people who live there, the ordinary folk who fish and farm and make pots. And if this richness was not enough, he imbues the whole with explorations of deep philosophical and spiritual questions, often sparked by lucent insights and seemingly off-hand comments. It is intelligent and treats me as if I was as well. I very much look forward to the final book.

Clone - Richard Cowper

2010-04-06T12:45:00.000+01:00

Alvin works with chimps. They treat him kindly as he isn’t very bright. Which is why only Norbert really takes Alvin seriously when he says he has seen an angel. Not that Norbert, religious though he is, believes that Alvin has seen an angel, but… Before they can work out what has happened, Norbert the chimp is asked to escort Alvin from their forest work camp, across London to the laboratory of Professor Poynter.

The Professor believes in Alvin’s vision because she knows what Alvin really is – a clone, one of four young men who together form a gestalt entity. Mind wiped and separated years before after demonstrating immense psychic powers, the four are getting their memory back. But then things go wrong. Alvin and Norbert get caught up in a mass extermination, Alvin finds his angel only to be kidnapped by militant apes, the Security Services lumber into action, and a chase across Europe ensues.

This is a marvellous romp, a comic novel of great inventiveness, full of the deep questions one associates with Cowper’s work, deftly executed with some wonderfully drawn characters. Politics, the nature of identity, animal rights, the ethics of experimentation, and the relative merits of apples and bananas are all explored with a lightness of touch that makes this a wonderful read. The story is fairly simple, yet it is an excellent vehicle for exploring ideas and issues. And demonstrating the range of Cowper’s talent.

The Wanderground - Sally Miller Gearhart

2010-03-26T11:29:00.001Z

This is a well-written novel that explores important questions. Yet it left me deeply unsatisfied. The novel posits a future in which the Earth has rebelled against the domination of men. They are confined to ‘the city’, the only place where technology (and male sexual potency) still functions. Whilst there are women in the city, some have moved to the hill country and created communities. There they have also developed telepathy, telekinesis, and the power of flight.

As a scenario, it is science fantasy rather than science fiction; wishful thinking rather than a genuine exploration of how the earth has been ravaged and what the consequences might be. But as, in part, a utopian novel, the important aspect of the book is the exploration of ideas about how a particular community works.

We are treated to a number of chapters that display the powers the hill women have developed, that tell us how wonderfully loving and ecologically conscious they all are. By half way I was beginning to tire of the sugary and highly sexist assumptions that underpinned this ‘utopian’ society.

The book is lauded for its questioning of the nature of violence and whether this is gendered based. Apart from a token argument toward the end that tries to shoehorn a bit of balance into the question, the book seems to start with and expound the idea that men are responsible for all violence and ills in the world, that all women and homosexuals are victims.

This seriously undermines what would otherwise have been a truly interesting work. Had this stark, black and white image been given shade and colour; had the storyline (such as it is) been better developed (so that the feeling of threat came across as more than the annoyance one might experience at a shoe lace breaking) and resolved with a bit more than, ‘Oh we’d better think about doing something about that,’ before getting straight back to life as normal; it would have been lifted into a different league altogether.

I do realise that these may actually have been some of the points that the author was trying to make – that utopia is all well and good, but it is boring, suffocating, shored up by the prejudices of those for whom it is utopia (and a hell for everyone else), as well as being extremely vulnerable to alternative visions of the world. Unfortunately, judging by the praise heaped on the book, these particular observations were either unintended by the author, or missed by the many who read it.

For all that, it is well worth reading, not least for the fact it is fantasy book that makes an attempt to tackle some of the most serious questions facing humanity. This can be done whilst still producing a well-written work. Such books exist. Sadly they are few and far between. We should treasure the ones we do have.

The Road To Corlay - Richard Cowper

2010-03-21T11:20:00.000Z

Richard Cowper (real name John Middleton Murry) came of illustrious literary stock. That sort of thing can destroy you as a writer, or it can make you. In Cowper’s case, it clearly had a good influence – even if he turned away from ‘literary’ writing and opted for the genres of science fiction and fantasy to tell his tales.

This gives us a wonderful mix of a highly accomplished writer allowing his imagination free range. The result is sophisticated and complex work that is also lyrical, accessible, and which touches on areas most sf&f writers steer clear of or do very badly.

In this case, the subject is religion. Most sf&f writers these days would give us a sixty thousand word prologue explaining the religion and all its by-ways; we would be ‘treated’ to pages of ceremonial and dreary descriptions of places and people before we got anywhere near a story. And then it would be handled badly.

There is nothing especially original about Cowper’s story – two religious cultures (one old, one new) clash. But instead of being portentous about it, Cowper tells us the story of individuals caught up in this conflict. Through their stories we learn of the wider conflict, but it always remains at a personal and sometimes heartbreaking level.

And if that was not enough, Cowper adds extra layers. All are beautifully portrayed; all treat the reader with intelligence. We do not need to have things explained if the writer weaves these things into their tale. We are given enough to see what the writer means, yet not so much that we cannot then apply our own imagination. Cowper does this wonderfully. The hints of ecological disaster, the way the past affects the future, the way actions have consequences, the way that failure to act also has consequences.

This book is the first of a trilogy and this edition contains the novella which inspired the rest of the story. I read them both a long time when they were first published, but have only now managed to find a set of all three. I am looking forward very much to seeing how Cowper develops what has happened so far. If he keeps to the standard of this first book, I am not going to be disappointed.

Cryptozoic - Brian Aldiss

2010-03-13T14:05:00.000Z

A story about time and time-travel – the basic premiss is that time is purely our perception of the continuum and with training of the mind we are able to travel in time. This becomes so popular it affects the economy and leads to social break down, followed by revolution and military dictatorship. Against this background, Bush, one of the more accomplished travellers is forcibly recruited by the military and tasked with assassinating someone who has taken time-travel to a further level and who speculates that our perception of time is the wrong way round.

Bush, of course, has no desire to assassinate someone who might be able to bring down the military dictatorship. Along with other rebels he manages to find the fugitive and learn his secret before others succeed in assassinating him. The plot sounds like something straight from a sci fi pulp magazine, but that background is thoughtfully handled and the emphasis of the book is on the internal world of the characters and their own precarious navigation through what just might be madness.

Aldiss never fails to surprise me. Even with books I have read before (this first appeared in 1967 under the title An Age), I am always surprised by the feel of them, the texture of the story, the approach to ideas. Mind time travel was not a new idea, but Aldiss explores the idea here and introduces a different slant that could perhaps have done with more exploration (although many others have explored the idea).

Well written and well constructed, with an ending that leaves you wondering, this is an excellent example of how sf can blend action and ideas and come up with something every bit as good as a literary novel.

Bunny Lake Is Missing - Evelyn Piper

2010-03-10T11:58:00.001Z

This 1957 thriller is an eye-opener. Like the Brand book, I sought this out because I once saw the film. And I’m glad I did. It’s riveting stuff. Dark, tense, suspenseful. And beautifully written.

Blanche Lake, an unmarried mother and recently moved to New York, goes the school at the end of the day to collect her daughter from the nursery. Bunny isn’t there. No one remembers Bunny being there in the first place. Blanche, already in a delicate psychological state because of her ‘situation’ and an overbearing mother, becomes frantic. The police are sceptical and, having looked through her apartment, can find no trace of a child having existed.

This is a nightmare that grips the reader from the very beginning and it does not let go. Taking place mostly in darkness, even the reader begins to wonder if, perhaps, Blanche is deluded and we are taking a journey into the mind of a psychotic woman. But little clues mount up and the motives of those whom Blanche meets in her frantic search are called into question.

This portrayal of a mind in turmoil and the paranoia it so easily engenders is wonderfully observed. The book is a blend of this psychological maelstrom (it rattles along at a breathless pace with no chapter breaks), and the best of noirish, gritty thriller writing. Although it lacks the overt violence of a Chandler or Hammett, the psychological violence is brutal and the sense of menace drenches the whole piece.

I have read criticism of the book’s ending claiming it is something of an anti-climax. It didn’t read like that to me. The final scene on the steps outside the school very cleverly wraps up the story whilst leaving so much unresolved that it is clear that whilst there is one level of resolution, there is a great deal more left of the night to be journeyed through.

Excellent stuff.

Green For Danger - Christianna Brand

2010-03-08T15:36:00.001Z

This is a good, old-fashioned whodunit of the very best kind. Well plotted. Great characters. Great background. Well-written. What more do you need?

The action takes place in a hospital during the Blitz. An ARP Warden dies on the operating table. Although devastating to those involved, it is investigated and pronounced to be an accident. And then one of the nurses claims it was a murder and knows how it was done. When she is found stabbed to death, the whole can of ugly little worms is spilled.

I first came across this in the film version. With a screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Alastair Sim as the detective (along with a notable cast), you can imagine how good it was – noirish, pacy, and full of menace, yet retaining an understated wit. I had been keeping an eye open for the book for a long time and was glad, finally, to get hold of a copy. It is every bit as good as the film. Well-written, it sticks to the conventions of the whodunit (there are clues from the very beginning and you are never cheated), yet rises above much of the genre to find a place in company with work by the likes of Allingham and Marsh (and better than Christie and Sayers).

I will certainly be keeping my eye out for more of Brand’s work.

The Last Of The Country House Murders - Emma Tennant

2010-03-06T12:05:00.001Z

Like a number of her early novels, the first impression is of a bit of ‘60s fluff – slightly weird light reading. But that is to do these books a disservice. Yes they are weird (sometimes completely off the wall surreal) – which for me is a good thing. Yes they are comic (in that apparently light-hearted foolishness that fools you long enough for the vinegar to hit the raw nerve ends) – which for me is a good thing. Yes they are short – a great virtue when confronted with the bloated corpses of books that are passed off as literature.

First impressions, however, are deceptive. This is multi-layered work that wears its erudition and its vision very lightly. Not in a throwaway sense, but in the way that elegant solutions always draw the ‘why didn’t I think of that response’. It is simple, yet a work of profundity at the same time. It is also prescient.

In some unspecified and not-too-distant future, Britain is collapsing beneath the yoke of a vaguely Orwellian state. The proles are literally beyond the pale and left to fend for themselves as best they can. Dangerous thinkers are isolated. Those previously wealthy are shut up in enclaves and allowed to die out, playing out their rituals in little theme parks. Those that are biggest threat to the state are kept distracted by endless tours and diversions. One of these is to be exactly what the title suggests.

This prefigures concerns that emerged in the ‘80s that Britain was fast become a heritage theme park and that the only industrial jobs left would be in museums, or in TV shows that harked back to a golden age. Country house murders, country house tours, all played on this cosy and rosy view of the past. But it is a past that never existed (and those elements that did were propped up then as in this future, by misery and servitude to an ethos that protects an elite). And because it never existed, attempts to recreate it soon fall apart. The planned murder goes completely awry. The agent of the state tasked with overseeing it, fails completely. And the proles storm the barricades.

Although we do not learn what happens afterwards (probably more of the same but with different masters), we get a glimpse not just of what is about to happen politically in Britain, but what the consequences might be. That there has been no revolution, no popular uprising, is not a defect of the book. The potential is there. Sadly, perhaps (or not) the British are supine when it comes to upheaval. They’d rather deal with the devil than throw him out and start taking responsibility for themselves.

Simply written (and clearly the work of an author being allowed by a publisher to develop their talent) this is, nonetheless, a highly accomplished work. Its comic element is reminiscent of Jack Trevor Story (anarchic, dark, well observed, and tending to the absurd). Its brevity, as I have alluded, is one of its strengths – the reader is trusted to fill in details and follow up on issues raised. It was and remains a breath of fresh air. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps, but definitely to mine.

Vineland - Thomas Pynchon

2010-03-04T11:10:00.000Z

This book, appropriately enough, was a bit like listening to a harmless old stoner rambling on in the corner of the room. By turns interesting, funny, and strange, but for the most part following an internal road map that has no relevance to the outside world, stopping off along the way to point out stuff that to the stoned mind is probably fascinating, but to an outsider is a chipped old bit of concrete.

Thomas Pynchon is an author I feel I should like. I do remember being impressed with Gravity’s Rainbow when I read it in the ‘70s, but maybe my tastes have changed. Given the accolades on the cover, I couldn’t help thinking this was a case of emperor’s clothes. The plot is pure TV soap-opera schlock. The cast of weirdos aren’t very weird. There is next to no characterization – and the one character with whom one should have had any sympathy elicited none from me. Indeed, by the time I got to the end of the book I was hoping they’d all get run over or whisked off in black helicopters never to be seen again.

The whole gave the impression of being a uniformly dull slab of rock onto which someone had tried, without success, to carve an elaborate portrait of a particular piece of American history. They used the wrong tools, to my mind, as it seemed to me that the surface was barely scratched. Maybe that’s the haze of dope smoke obscuring the view. The paranoia of the period, the hope and betrayal, the self-obsession characteristic both of many hippies and most Feds (as well as the destructive cycle into which both became locked) have all been dealt with far better by other writers.

I had been considering looking at other work by Pynchon, but after this, I don’t think I’ll bother.

Hello America - J G Ballard

2010-02-18T11:36:00.000Z

This is Ballard on fine form and with tongue firmly in cheek. The book tells of a boat that sails from Plymouth across the Atlantic, making landfall on the east coast of America. But this is not the past. It is a hundred years hence, long after the USA was abandoned in the wake of a fuel crisis. Refugees had poured back to Europe and Africa and the land, abandoned and prey to geo-engineering, has become desert.

The expedition fights its way through the sand dunes of Manhattan and across the great desert until they discover the vast tropical forests that have grown up around Las Vegas. And that’s not all they discover. For living in the abandoned Howard Hughes suite they find a megalomaniac self-styled President Manson, firing off nuclear weapons to sterilise the creeping diseases that threaten his fastness.

The novel is a cornucopia of Ballardian imagery, liberally mixed with the iconography of America. Ballard never made any secret of his admiration for the USA. He loved the energy that made it great; he was equally aware that this same energy made it supremely destructive. He revelled in the paradox. And rather than trying to resolve this conundrum with a moral tale, he simply presents it in all its surreal and decaying glory. Although the ending is similar to his previous novel, both upbeat and mystical, this shies away from the more personal note of his Shepperton odyssey.

Ballard’s strength is not in his style. His writing is fairly straightforward, subsumed to the content. It is his vision that resonates and captivates. This canvas is, perhaps, gaudier than some he had painted, but that is entirely appropriate for the subject. Yet there is a great deal of subtlety there as well; in the shifting relationship of the various peoples, native or otherwise; in the descent into internal landscapes that mirror the outer world in such a way that it is never easy to know which is which; in the almost throwaway use of ideas that later and lesser authors have taken up and turned into genres dying even as they define them.

Princess Diana's Revenge - Michael de Larrabeiti

2010-02-16T12:41:00.001Z

Some spiders spin webs so large there is no escaping them, especially if you bumble along in a haze of alcohol. Once trapped, the more you struggle to break free, the more you become entangled. And when the spiders are deranged…

The day Joe Rapps is released from Wandsworth after a three year stretch for killing two youngsters in a car crash, driving while drunk; he did not think he would live long. The father of the children was a well-known violent criminal. So when he is whisked away from London, presented with a luxury house in a quiet country village and a bank balance to match, he is just a bit suspicious.

It comes as little surprise to find he is surrounded by some very strange people. With disappearing nannies, someone shooting dogs, and a countess determined to avenge the death of Princess Diana, village life promises to be less than restful. Sucked into other people’s madnesses, Joe simply tries to keep his head above water and enjoy the luxuries thrown at him whilst he can.

This is a fun book with a dark streak running through its heart. The author has captured the both the beauty of the English countryside and the feeling of claustrophobia that can sometimes manifest itself in living in a small community. And over this there is a layer of doom, because struggling in the web of other people’s delusions – especially when they have psychopathic tendencies – is never going to end well.

Although best known for his Borrible books, Michael de Larrabeiti has written a number of novels. Like the others, this is well-written, imaginative, relaxed without being loose, darkly-comic, and offers a frightening glimpse into the obsessed mind. A great read.

A User's Guide To The Millennium - J G Ballard

2010-02-14T11:04:00.000Z

Having read bits and pieces of Ballard’s non-fiction over the years, it was a treat to add this to my Ballard collection and read them all in a short space of time. The pieces are, for the most part, reviews of books, films, and art exhibitions, but there are also other pieces. They are also short, 90 packed into a book of 300 pages. This makes the book ideal for dipping, should you so wish, yet allows you to soak up the intensity of each piece and keep reading. Dipping is fun; a continuous read gives you an altogether Ballardian experience. And as each piece is dated you could (and one day I will) read them chronologically.

Ballard as a fiction writer is well known (even if you have never read his work, you have probably heard of him and have some idea of the kind of thing he writes). He has never shied away from the fact he wrote science fiction; he has never been ashamed of being fiercely intellectual. Yet all this sits lightly. Whilst he did not eschew these things, he did not make a big deal of them either.

The same is true of his non-fiction. This pieces display a deep interest in a wide variety of subjects and show just how intelligent, imaginative, and original his view of the world was. Written in an easy style and leavened with humour, you know that even if you don’t always agree with what he has to say it will always be interesting and stimulating.

The other great thing about this collection is the insight it affords into his fiction. In the autobiographical pieces we see where many of the images that haunt his work originate; in the writings on art, we see how these images were enriched. His thoughts on science fiction show how he came to write what he did. Indeed, you might be tempted to think of this book as a user’s guide to J G Ballard. But there is always a gap there, a fence, a firmly closed door. Which is exactly as it should be, because although Ballard wrote about the cult of celebrity, he had the good sense and integrity to keep his own life to himself.

So if you want to understand Ballard a bit better, this is a good place to look. But don’t expect to learn everything; because although these pieces allow you a peek around the back of the scenery, as it were, all you will find is more scenery. The director is somewhere else, living his own life in the privacy of his own home with his family around him.

Nine O'Clock Shadow - Jack Trevor Story

2010-02-11T13:56:00.001Z

Nine o’clock. The time of execution. That’s the shadow falling across Harry Jukes. Wrongly convicted of shooting a policeman, his only hope is Sexton Blake who listened to all the evidence at the trial and believed Harry’s absurd, unbelievable story.

Like all of Story’s Sexton Blake adventures, this is tightly plotted and well told. Nothing is wasted (you can’t waffle when you have to write to a specific page count), yet the author manages to fill this with great detail and characterisation. It also proves you can tackle serious issues and explore ideas whilst remaining an entertaining read.

The plot turns round a coincidence. Coincidences don’t offer feature in good writing as it is considered implausible. Yet it is coincidences that spark the most interesting of stories. In this case, Harry Jukes helps himself to someone else’s car to impress his girlfriend. Unfortunately he picks on a car that has been used by a gang to steal a lorry load of arms to pass on to the IRA. After that, things go from bad to worse, as they often do in such situations. We get wrong-footed and all our decisions are hasty and lead us into great trouble. For Harry, that puts him on the side of the road with a flat tyre trying to get away from a helpful policeman who flags down a lorry. You can guess which one.

As Blake investigates and uncovers reluctant witnesses, along with the people behind the heist, we are treated to a portrait of late 1950s England. Coppers on bikes, capital punishment, wide boys, skiffle groups, and coffee bars (the most successful establishment in getting youth off the streets and drinking milk as Story wryly observes).

This is entertainment at its best.

Alice Fell - Emma Tennant

2010-02-11T13:54:00.000Z

On the face of it, there is nothing to this book. It recounts the birth and early life of Alice Paxton, born to the housekeepers of a large house owned by the Old Man. And that’s it. Yet this is the most astonishing, magical, work. Surreal in content and written in a poetic style, it draws the reader into a bizarre yet internally consistent world. Nothing is explained in the way a conventional narrative might attempt. Rather, we are presented with a series of images – some still, some moving, all shot through a symbolist lens – that accumulate to create a gorgeous, rich tapestry.

As well as the life of Alice, the book portrays the fragmentation of worlds; the chaos of a collapsing old order from which is born the screaming infant of the new. Those who lived through world wars find themselves at a loss when trying to cope with the social revolution of the ‘60s. The quiet of the countryside with its old and long-established rhythms is eroded by the noise and bustle of new development, new ideas, and new attitudes.

Through all this, Alice grows and Alice falls; moving across a dreamlike landscape. The characters interact in a formal, dance-like way, caught in golden moments as they try to pick sense and meaning from the fast-whirling world about them.

Although this is a short work (like many of Tennant’s earlier work) it is dense, lyrical, and hypnotic, making use of simple language in a way that unlocks the most complex of ideas. Delicate like the decaying tapestries and books in the house, it leaves one with the sense that if not nurtured, the very words will fade into the mist that rolls off the downs around the Old Man’s house.

It is difficult to say more about this book. Its uniqueness makes normal modes of description redundant. All I can say is look out for a copy and read it. See just how good writing can be. Wonder why Tennant and writers like her are not lauded in preference to the turgid, self-obsessed drone of today’s literati.

The Unlimited Dream Company - J G Ballard

2010-02-07T12:47:00.000Z

This book suffers from two things. A perception that Ballard’s books are unremittingly apocalyptic and a title that would better have graced a Bradbury collection of short stories. There’s nothing to be done about the latter. As for the former, it is a misconception – the sort of label that gets fixed to an author and which sticks no matter what sort of work they write.

Of course, there is another label that has attached to Ballard which suits this book perfectly – surrealist. It is a master work of surreal imagination. And there is more than a hint of symbolist influence as well. This is not so much in the style, which is fairly straightforward, at times repetitive, but in the content.

The central character, Blake (a name that comes packed with visionary luggage), steals a small aircraft at Heathrow despite not being able to fly. He gets as far south as the Thames at Shepperton (just a few miles away) and crashes into the river. After the aircraft sinks, Blake finds himself on the river bank. And so begins a remarkable sojourn in the small town. The setting lends itself perfectly to the events that follow. Shepperton (where Ballard lived) is a typical small, riverside town in an extraordinary landscape. Surround by lakes, close to a huge airport and, of course, home to film studios. Against this backdrop, Blake begins to transform the community.

The inhabitants dream of flight and birds appear; they dream of swimming and the river fills with exotic piscine life. Blake becomes a pagan god and where he walks flowers bloom and trees grown. The whole of Shepperton is transformed and its inhabitants drawn into the transformation.

Mystical, earthy, exuberant, Blake casts his spell, transforming himself as well as the others until he reaches self-realisation. With the sick healed, the dead raised, and the town restored, Blake dissipates in a gentle glory.

Whilst this book contains Ballard’s signature themes of technology, sex, and alienation, along with familiar images, it is a life-affirming work shot through (appropriately enough) with prophetic flashes. And whilst society does break down, far from being catastrophic, it is both transformative and satisfying.

The Hole - John Davey

2010-02-02T15:52:00.001Z

Sally Cross has a hole inside her; an emptiness left when her mother died that seems to be sucking the joy out of life and the life out of her. School is going down the pan with the added joy of having to cope with bullying. Her relationship with her father has hit bumpy ground and gets bumpier when she realises he has started to see another woman. Happy days they are not. And as if that was not enough, Sally begins to wonder if she is not going mad. Because things move, strange lights glimmer, the hamster levitates, and someone is leaving obscure graffiti in her school locker.

What might have been a run of the mill teen-angst work of doom and misery takes an intriguing turn once Sally decides to take charge and find out what is going on. She soon finds herself regretting it, catapulted into an alternate universe where she must confront a terrible evil. At this point the book could have become a run of the mill fantasy adventure, but the author avoids this as well.

With a lightness of touch and some startling and original images, John Davey creates a nightmare world with a nightmare logic. Sally and her companions must fight their way through making use of the skills they have to defeat the plans of the evil they find there.

The book is well constructed and well written. The character of Sally Cross is well drawn and we share her emotional ups and downs without the book ever becoming falsely sentimental. It keeps up a good pace but also allows itself room to breathe. There are moments of real horror, there is humour, and a satisfying resolution that nonetheless stays within the bounds of the real – the happiness is tinged with sadness.

I have read a lot of children’s and young adult books over the years. This ranks up there with the best. It is good storytelling based on plausible and realistic characters. It is unfussy. It is a great read.

Vast Alchemies ~ The Life And Work Of Mervyn Peake - G Peter Winnington

2010-01-31T12:24:00.000Z

I read this when it first appeared ten years ago and was lucky enough to acquire a copy a few weeks ago. The author is someone who knows his Peake inside out, upside down, and probably by touch in a darkened room. His research is meticulous (he went back to source material rather than rely on previous not altogether reliable works), yet he wears it lightly. The book also has the advantage of being comprehensive whilst remaining a sensible length. All of which makes an ideal biography.

This work also has an advantage over others in that it treats its subject with a great deal of sympathy. That is not to say it ignores Peake’s faults and foibles. But a great deal of rubbish was promulgated about Peake, especially during his illness in his final years. Some of his treatment was nothing less than barbaric; his decline was heartbreaking.

If you are a fan of Peake’s art or writing (or both), this is the perfect companion. It not only helps to unlock the source of much of Peake’s style, it provides an interesting insight into the creative process and how the artist interacts with a world that is clearly far more bizarre than anything that Peake created.

The Dark Light Years - Brian Aldiss

2010-01-29T14:39:00.001Z

Cast as a comic space opera, this is a bleak and deeply disturbing tale of how we treat what we don’t understand. To make this plausible, Aldiss created aliens whose mode of communication was far too complex for inter-species communication to be possible. He also based his aliens on the hippopotamus, large pachyderms who wallow in mud and whose excreta is an integral part of their life. And having made them near impossible to communicate with and abhorrent to ‘civilised’ people, he sets up a tale that explores the bestial nature of human beings.

Aldiss is a fine stylist. The book is dedicated to Harry Harrison and in terms of style, could well have been written by Harrison. Aldiss clearly recognized that using such a stylistic framework (comic pulp science fiction) provides the perfect contrast to the subject matter. The comic approach (although it is by no means a comedy) exposes the visceral nastiness of the humans, the ineptitude of those who have good intentions, their self-absorption, their severance from the natural world (and consequent psychoses).

It is also a novel about morality, exploring through the relationships between the characters what it means to be moral and what it means to lack or disregard them. Deeply philosophical, it posits the Gaia theory in a throwaway line, fifteen years before Lovelock’s first book. All of this in a short, pacy book. A lesser author would have given us something five times as long (probably at the behest of a publishing industry that seems to think bigger is better), and nowhere near as interesting or disturbing. This is the genre being used to best effect.

The Crack - Emma Tennant

2010-01-27T12:32:00.001Z

Originally published as The Time of the Crack, this is deceptively light and simple, an intriguing product of the early 1970s. I had read extracts before now (chapters from a work in progress), but this is the first time I’ve read the whole thing – a surreal tale of how the southern part of England breaks away and sinks into the sea.

It is not a disaster story of either the Wyndham or the Ballard schools, but a whimsical, Carrollian, acid-fuelled romp. Set in London, the Thames runs dry and a huge crack appears, hills are thrust up, buildings distort and transform, troops of academics and psychoanalysts roam the streets. The plot, such as it is, hangs around several characters, the most important being Baba, the only bunny left at the Playboy Club.

Beneath the whimsy, however, there is a darker tale at play. There are hints with the fun that is made of trends and types of people, stripped pine kitchens, reversion therapy, capitalism, well-off middle-class eco-warriors, self-absorbed academics who argue about competing theories when reality proves them all to be wrong – all come in for a swift kicking. Yet these vignettes, when taken as a whole, show the very fertile soil into which society has sown the seeds of its own destruction.

As well as a deceptively simple content, there is a style to match. Straightforward, tightly written and constructed, the text goes to prove you can tell a good story and convey deep ideas with the simplest of language. The book is not partisan or polemical. It tells an amusing tale. But like the fairy tales that focus on the jolly goings-on in the sunlit woodland glade, you are also aware of the surrounding darkness of the forest, of the panting of wolves as they wait their chance.

Greenmantle - John Buchan

2010-01-26T10:34:00.000Z

Greenmantle is interesting on a number of counts. It is an entertaining yarn. It sits in the middle of the transition in the genre. It deals with subjects that are sharply relevant today. Set in the early part of the First World War, Richard Hannay is called from his hospital bed (recovering from a wound received at the Battle of Loos) and asked if he is prepared to undertake a secret mission. After some persuasion he agrees and sets out to neutralise and destroy a German plot to foment Holy War in Turkey.

This has all the potential to be a jingoistic piece of propaganda, especially given its parentage and environment: a British Intelligence officer during the First World War. And whilst it is true there are moments where it approaches the crumbly edge, Buchan always manages to turn what appears to be patriotic fervour on its head. At one point, for example, Hannay takes shelter with a poor German family as he flees from the German military. It is clear that whilst Hannay has no truck with the military ambitions of the upper echelons of German society, he has every sympathy with the ordinary folk of all sides caught up in the conflict. We also get moments of fervour for the conflict. Hannay seems to miss the fighting, but Buchan also makes his character acknowledge that this is, at times, a kind of madness.

The discussion of politics and the social background is what marks this as a transition novel. Most tales of this kind, dealing with adventurers and with intelligence operatives, tended to be straightforward thrillers, much more in the style of The Thirty-nine Steps (although even that was something different to run-of-the-mill ‘shockers’). We also get something of the pattern still used today: operative called in for briefing, discussion of background, disguises, chases, meeting the villain (although we are thankfully spared the idiocy of the villain explaining their plan in full), and a rousing finale.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this novel, written more than 100 years ago, is the subject matter. It is true we do not go into any great depth, but the very fact that an author could use Islamic Jihad as a credible threat, as well as pointing up the fact that non-Islamic powers have been willing to use it as a weapon in their armoury against other non-Islamic powers, is both interesting and depressing. Buchan was not the first to do this, but clearly recognised the tactical importance and the willingness of ‘western’ powers to interfere in the politics and religions of other nations to achieve their own ends.

I found the novel sagged a bit in the middle, largely because it did not seem at that point to know whether it was meant to be a thriller or a more measured novel of espionage. That aside it was well worth the read.

The Time Machine & Other Stories - H G Wells

2010-01-15T15:15:00.000Z

Several times whilst reading this I found myself checking the dates of publication, most notably for ‘The Land Ironclads’. The grim prescience of this story is chilling. Published in 1903 it depicts trench warfare and the use of tanks with horrific authenticity. Whilst it is true that Wells was not the only writer to envisage modern warfare in the decade before the First World War, his style (the story is told as if by newspaper reporters) and the sheer authority of his voice add weight to his work. That and the fact he did it time and again with scientific romances.

This is a strong collection of work containing stories and fables that are by turns witty, charming, haunting, and horrifying. ‘The Door In The Wall’ is a poignant tale and Wells is an assured enough writer to allow his readers to draw his own conclusions. Another form of obsession features in ‘The Pearl Of Love’ and demonstrates just how callous a person can become in the grip of an obsession. ‘Empire Of The Ants’ is the forerunner of many such natural disasters, and perhaps the best of them all.

‘The Country Of The Blind’, here in its re-written and longer version, is a sublime piece of writing. It is one of many in which Wells explores alternative societies and how they evolve and develop strategies for coping with the world. Yet this is done without once turning into a sociological or political lecture. It is a human story about the sacrifices we are and are not prepared to make.

And, of course, there is ‘The Time Machine’. Not Wells’ first time travel story, but by far the best from him and rarely bettered by anyone else. The strength of story lies, as it does with many of Wells’ scientific romances, in the matter of fact and straightforward way in which he recounts the tale. From its intriguing opening through to its eerie denouement it catches the imagination and sets the standard for works to follow. Again we are presented with an alternative form of society, one that has evolved to an extreme from the very society of Wells’ own time, yet this is part of the story and never a lecture. As Wells grew older and became more frustrated with the idiocies (as he saw them) of humanity, he did tend to rail, but in the early part of his career he kept that balance in his work. You can read this as a political tract without once having the fun of the story destroyed.

Wells goes in and out of fashion, but there is no doubt that his was an original mind which had the blessing of being coupled with an ability to write clear and precise prose. His work is always worth a visit.

High-Rise - J G Ballard

2010-01-12T14:12:00.000Z

The third of Ballard’s informal triptych of social commentary is a bleak picture of total social disintegration. A brand new high-rise development (somewhere close to the river), the first of a number of such blocks, fills with residents. This is not a bog-standard, council built tower block, but a luxury development containing shops, swimming pools, a school, roof gardens, and all modern conveniences. On the evening that the last apartment is occupied, parties take place and immediately the genteel jostling for position begins. The gentility does not last long. Petty tricks and spitefulness degenerate into open hostility. Services are vandalised, electricity cut off, and tribes begin to form.

The early stages of this disintegration are given in greater detail than the later, reflecting the break down in communication. This is also highlighted by the use of different points of view, jumping from one protagonist to another, seemingly at random. Toward the end of the book we are left with descriptions of the building and its few remaining inhabitants without any attempt to explain. This is a far more effective device that a straight narrative would have been. Much is left to the reader to fill in the gaps, although the gaps do not really need filling. No explanation is given for the collapse (although it does seem to follow patterns found in studies of overcrowding in sealed communities).

This is the bleakest of the triptych and perhaps reflects most accurately the inner vision of Ballard’s memories of the Second World War. Whilst the setting is different, the social set-up, the isolated community, the social disintegration – all stem from the same experience. All the familiar motifs (especially the deserted, rubbish strewn swimming pools) are there, heading toward their purest expression in Ballard’s most autobiographical piece of fiction. Along with its eerie ending, this is Ballard at his best.

Jacob's Room - Virginia Woolf

2010-01-05T15:57:00.000Z

Jacob Flanders. Was there ever a character with a more prophetic name that that? It hangs there throughout the book as a vision of all the things that are left unspoken in the narrative. The elephant, if you like, in Jacob’s Room.

This book is remarkable on two counts. The first is in the story it tells. The scenes dance and skip before our eyes as if we were watching insects flit about a pond on a long, lazy summer’s afternoon – perhaps a hint of thunder in the air (just as Jacob encounters when in Greece). There are moments of whimsy, moments of insight into the lives of the characters who seem mostly self-absorbed, going about their own business with scant attention to the rest of the world. And yet, we become drawn into the lives of these people, perhaps because we meet in much the same way we meet and interact with real people. We come to know them through our encounters, not through an all-seeing eye; the only over-arching vision accorded us is the knowledge of what that thunder implies.

The second remarkable thing about this book is the style. Woolf’s two previous novels were fairly conventional narratives. But she wanted to break away from conventional patterns in order to better express her own view of the world and the way in which she saw characters interacting. The text teases with hints and glimpses, presents impressionistic pictures, flits from one character and one situation to another. It both builds up a portrait of events and the lives involved whilst stripping away, layer by layer, all the surface things that are of no consequence. The language is poetic, rich with imagery, yet never obscure. It reads, at times, like something from Eliot (whose The Waste Land appeared in the same year).

Also interesting about the work is that although it is about Jacob Flanders, we are rarely accorded a direct glimpse into his thoughts. What we learn of him is learned through others. For these are the memories and the memorial to one of the millions whose lives were wasted in the mud of Europe, whose sacrifice was completely in vain.

I have read and re-read Woolf ever since it was pointed out to me as a young teenager that my daily train journey to school passed the spot where she drowned herself. Not once have I been disappointed by a re-reading. Not once have I closed a book without finding whole new layers of meaning and an increased respect for what she accomplished as a writer.

grumbooks

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh

Interim - Dorothy Richardson

The Moment Of Eclipse - Brian Aldiss

Also read in 2011

Ice Trilogy - Vladimir Sorokin (tr Jamey Gambrell)

Baga - Robert Pinget

Pointed Roofs - Dorothy Richardson

The Slynx - Tatyana Tolstaya (tr Jamey Gambrell)

The Little Saint - Georges Simenon

The Milkman In The Night - Andrey Kurkov

The Zero Train - Yuri Buida

Maigret Has Doubts - Georges Simenon

The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Century: 1969 - Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill

Nirvana Bites - Debi Alper

The Sunday Books - Mervyn Peake & Michael Moorcock

Mahu or The Material - Robert Pinget

Wild Nights - Emma Tennant

Fremder - Russell Hoban

The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

The Ballad Of Halo Jones - Alan Moore & Ian Gibson

Lint - Steve Aylett

A Princess Of Mars - Edgar Rice Burroughs

Under A Canvas Sky - Clare Peake

A Web Of Air - Philip Reeve

Options - Robert Sheckley

Naked Lunch - William Burroughs

The Story Of The Amulet - E Nesbit

Jack On The Box - Jack Trevor Story

The Trouble With Trudy - Jack Trevor Story

Kleinzeit - Russell Hoban

Black God's Kiss - C L Moore

Asylum Piece - Anna Kavan

The Dragonfly Pool - Eva Ibbotson

Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

Running Wild - J G Ballard

The Day Of Creation - J G Ballard

The Complete Poems - T S Eliot

Dubliners - James Joyce

W H Auden Penguin Poets - W H Auden

Modem Times 2.0 Plus...

Empire Of The Sun - J G Ballard

The Lunatics Of Terra - John Sladek

The Crock Of Gold - James Stephens

The Third Policeman - Flann O'Brien

Mercier and Camier - Samuel Beckett

Other books read in 2010

I Shall Wear Midnight - Terry Pratchett

Two Women Of London - Emma Tennant

The Doomsters - Ross Macdonald

The Erasers - Alain Robbe-Grillet

We Who Are About To... - Joanna Russ

Kuldesak - Richard Cowper

Room 13 - Edgar Wallace

The Colour Of Rain - Emma Tennant

Romantic Egotist: An Unauthorised Biography of Jack Trevor Story - Brian Darwent

Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse

The Moving Target - Ross Macdonald

Dance Your Way To Psychic Sex - Alice Turing

The Bad Sister - Emma Tennant

Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction - Jonathan Culler

Visitants - Randolph Stow

The Entropy Exhibition - Colin Greenland

Albert Rides Again - Jack Trevor Story

The Female Man - Joanna Russ

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases - Vandermeer & Roberts [eds]

Tank Girl - Hewlett & Martin

Virginia Woolf - Hermione Lee

Queen Of Stones - Emma Tennant

Inverted World - Christopher Priest

Report On Probability A - Brian Aldiss

The Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield

Hotel De Dream - Emma Tennant

A Tapestry Of Time - Richard Cowper

Dying, In Other Words - Maggie Gee

One Last Mad Embrace - Jack Trevor Story

A Dream Of Kinship - Richard Cowper

Clone - Richard Cowper