Gav's Book Reviews

Coming over all .com

2013-04-30T09:18:00.002+01:00

And now, the end is near, it’s time to face, the final curtain…

So said Frank. He also went on to say he did it his way. I, however, am not. I’m jumping over to a .com site, and as I’m computer illiterate, I’m using someone else’s template to do it. Not so much my way as the easy way.

It’s a good move though, I promise. On www.gavsbookreviews.com you can now find a bunch of pages.

There’s all the 10GBR and 9GBR reviews in one easy place. There’s a whole other section for non-book reviewy type stuff. And (because I’m still Jenny from the block), a whole page from which you can jump back here and get hold of all the pre 2013 goodies. There's even a bit of a vanity page in which you can find a bunch of other stuff I do. And of course, the big show - reviews withour spoilers every Sunday. As Peggy Riley put it, that's my kind of Church.

So long, blogspot. It’s been a blast. And when I get frustrated with the big boys over in the .com gang, I’ll come snivelling back professing that it’s always been you.

Levels of Life - mashing it up, Julian Barnes style

2013-04-28T08:30:00.000+01:00

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (JonathanCape: 2013). A book in three parts from a Booker Prize winning author. A literary mash up, exploring the history of ballooning, photography, love stories, and death. Wide ranging stuff.

What’s the saddest thing you can think of? Me, it’s always been a husband losing his wife (or a wife losing her husband for that matter). Always got me that one. Doesn’t matter how cheesy it is, that plot element has always made me choke when it’s cropped up on the screen or page.

And yet I subject myself to this. One of the world’s most decorated writers putting pen to paper to explore the grief he felt when his wife died.

I’m an idiot.

In fairness, it’s not all about that. The book is split in three parts. The first is a bit of non-fiction about ballooning and photography, the second is a bit of historical fiction centred on a bohemian love story gone wrong, and then the third part is where Barnes goes to town on his grief.

It works. Brilliantly. And here’s why.

For starts, it works because of the first two sections. They’re amazing. A quirky history of a quirky endeavour, followed by a thorough (but tastily bite-sized) love story which grows as it’s told. Both of the first two sections entertained me, set some of the structural thought which characterised the third section's grief, and introduced emotion slowly rather than simply plunging you in at the deep end.

For seconds, it worked because of the honesty and the rawness and the sheer humanity of the third section. There is no universal truth to grief, no universal experience. Julian Barnes is Julian Barnes; he felt and experienced and reacted to his grief in a Julian Barnes way. At no point does he melt into easy cliché. At no point does he pluck at the usual heart strings in the usual ways. He violently kicks against any sense of Disney emotion. He tells what happened to him - anecdote by anecdote, analogy by analogy – and leaves little out.

And for thirds, it works because this is Julian Barnes we’re talking about here. The guy can write. Every now and then, a sentence or a phrase or a structure will just knock you flat on your ass. I’ve read Barnes before and not quite got it, but I’m acutely aware pretty much everyone else has. The guy has high flung literary praise coming at him from every direction. And in this book, I get it too. I submit. Julian Barnes; you can write good.

9 GBR

One of the best things you’ll read this year. Why not 10 you ask? Because I do the scores, not you.

Next week, another story of a man losing his wife. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Snapper - welcoming cuckoos

2013-04-21T10:49:00.001+01:00

Snapper by Brian Kimberling (Tinder Press: 2013). Nathan Lochmeuller is a man without motivation, and essentially falls into a job tracking song birds in a square mile of Indiana forest. He enjoys it, whilst his life and the world change around him. The novel skips between his youth, his adolescence and his grown-up years, all circling around the time he spends getting paid to watch birds.

You’re sitting with people you’ve grown up with, and you start reminiscing. Natural, right? You rehash conversations you’ve had fifty times, and you’re hilarious as you retell jokes only you guys get. It’s repetitive, but it’s comforting and indulgent. And, most importantly, you’re hilarious.

Then someone else enters the group. Some third party, unaware of how hilarious you are. You instantly get highly self aware. You glance at the cuckoo and realise how all this must sound through their ears. Boring. Irrelevant. If nothing else, you’re definitely not as funny as you thought you were.

Shared experience is fun to retread purely because it’s shared. The cuckoo wasn’t there though. To them, that time your mate got drunk and cut his hand is not the pinnacle of comedic endeavour. It’s dumb. I give you exactly ten minutes before the cuckoo’s eyes glaze over and they start planning an escape route.

That’s you and me though. That’s normal people. Brian Kimberling on the other hand – he’s a writer, and a pretty good one. He spreads out over 200-odd pages the formative experiences of Nathan Lochmeuller’s life. His own childish and adolescent and adult anecdotes. On the face of it, they’re pretty unremarkable. Kimberling sits us down opposite him, buys us a pint, and recounts vignette after vignette of experience in a life lived in Indiana.

This right here, this is the magic of story-telling. In the real world situation, the only way to make the cuckoo feel more involved is to change the topic of conversation to something they can more relate to. In Snapper though, Kimberling ploughs on, rambling his way through the narrative, dragging you deeper and deeper into Indiana.

Course, it’s not magic. There’s method to it. There are courses and workshops and entire traditions which show you how to do it. Kimberling draws on all this, no doubt, but he’s an artist, and what he achieves is remarkable. He makes sure Nathan Lochmeuller is witty and likeable (albeit a bit of a loser). He makes sure to reveal a beautiful and ugly Indiana. But most importantly, Kimberling injects meaning into each little experience he relates.

He does it subtly, but there are signposts and careful exposition; just enough so you know you’re not just reading about stuff that happened to Nathan Lochmeuller. This isn’t just a novel-length explanation of his life to date. Rather, in amongst it all, you see a search for worth in the world. A man with paths to choose but no belief in any of them. The beauty of simplicity.

That’s what we’re doing wrong, down the pub, when there’s a cuckoo in the group and our stories are boring them. We’re failing to explore meaning-of-life type questions through our experience.

I knew I was doing something wrong.

7 GBR

A gorgeously written, warm novel. It didn’t blow me away, but it did make me stop and think.

Next week, something a bit heartbreaking (if the book’s preamble is anything to go by).

Memories, from the corner of my mind...

2013-04-14T08:30:00.000+01:00

The Isles of Scilly - where I am right now and
you're not (unless you are)

One of the great things about the blogger platform is you can schedule stuff.

Right now, I’m on the wonderful Isles of Scilly for what promises to be an ace week of friends, weddings, and birdwatching (yeah, you didn’t know that about me, right). Meanwhile, my old mate Blogger makes sure there’s a fresh post here for you on Sunday morning.

I actually wrote this on Thursday. And you're reading it on Sunday. Mind bending.

Sadly no review this week. Have been buried in a few other things of late, including reading a sneak preview of the brand new Alan Haselhurst, due out in the Autumn (which I obviously can't tell you about yet or I'd be kicked out the family, son-in-law or not).

Will be back up to speed next week. In the meantime, I thought it worth revisiting a few highlights of the last two and bit years of GBR. Some of my fave reviews. Not all positive mind you, just some of the ones I enjoyed writing the most. You know the feeling; when you look back at what you've written and actually feel like it says what you meant. Well, the below are probably the closest I've got to that.

Bon apetit!

A Million Little Pieces – as recommended in a drunken taxi ride
Lanark – epicness
The Farnsworth Invention – cementing Sorkin as one of my man crushes (of which there seem to be worryingly many)
Next World Novella – bird watching analogies creeping in
Anna Karenina – amongst the biggest of biscuits
Before I go to Sleep – soon to be a movie starring Nicole Kidman, and they have GBR to thank
Over Seventy – a straight up treat
The Ask – introducing Suzi Hightime
Lights out in Wonderland – the beginning of a DBC Pierre obsession
Moneyball – the first EVER GBR review. Doesn't even have a picture or nuthin. Retro.

Capital - stuff happening

2013-04-07T09:00:00.000+01:00

Capital by John Lanchester (Faber and Faber: 2013) Pepys Road is home to a mix of London life, from the high moneyed to the high principled. Some have roots in the street stretching back generations, some are riding a current wave of good fortune. And others simply visit to give out parking tickets. Lanchester tells us all of their stories.

“Life is just a bunch of stuff happening, one thing after the other.” Someone said that once (or something similar anyway). I’m no good at quotes, so let’s assume it was one of the usuals (Churchill, or Wylde, or Lennon, or some such). Whoever said it, there’s sense to it.

Storytelling usually relies on recognisable arcs and climaxes. There’s a great book on my shelf I got one Christmas on the seven basic plots which you can spot in the majority of stories. Most of the time, one version or another of these is told. And most of the time, it’s a departure from real life.

Real lives don’t have arcs. Resolutions. Beginnings, middles and ends. We can impose those structures on memories, but usually it’s just stuff happening, one thing after the other.

“Quit being a jerk, GBR. Just tell me about the book” right?

OK, the link I’m trying to make here is that Capital is nigh on 600 pages of stuff happening. Lights shone on a bunch of characters’ lives, all of which started before the first page and all of which carry on after the last page.

Sure, there are little swirls of arcs, but no grand thread. People’s fortunes rise and fall, they love and die, succeed and fail – all that jazz, but the overwhelming impression you get as you’re working through this isn’t of “ohmygodohmygodohmygod, I wonder what happens next.” It’s gentler than that. More real for it, but less dramatic.

Great book are (often) about escapism. About extraordinary things or extraordinary people (or both if you can get away with it). Not Capital. Everything that happens in Capital is stuff that happens every day. Well, maybe not everything, but a lot.

Even the mystery of an anonymous “we want what you have” campaign fizzles out in rather unspectacular fashion.

I’m still not sure if this is criticism or praise. Lanchester is clearly trying to lay down in words a representation of life in London (a fact screamed loudly by the title of the book). Probably more accurate to say “lives”. He jumps between a bunch of very different people with very different experiences of the capital. Each is so expertly drawn that they seem very real. Almost ordinary. In so doing, he presents a more complete picture than other novels in the current (though not entirely original) craze for using London as a muse (see Zadie Smith’s NW, or Francesca Segal’s The Innocents).

And that’s cool. I mean it; that’s cool. A hundred polaroids of London from a dozen perspectives. Variety. Reality.

But it’s not grabbing. Not profound. Not heart racing or heart breaking or heart warming. There’s little high emotion here. Not much high anything really. Just stuff happening, one thing after the other.

There are one or two currents that may have been deeper than I appreciated. Maybe this is a book that gives up more every time you read it. But when you turn the last page, you’re not sent running back to the first to find out.

5 GBR

I’ll be disagreed with for that, I’m sure. This is a best seller. There’s a lot positive about Capital. But on the GBR scale, which prizes pure enjoyment over all else, it falls in the middle ground.

Next week, I’m off to Scilly (hurrah!) Hope to get through something and post about it before I leave, but if not, adios until next time.

East of Eden - it's been coming

2013-03-31T08:30:00.000+01:00

Pretty sure I stole this copy
from father GBR, and never
returned it. Soz dad

East of Eden by JohnSteinbeck (The Viking Press: 1952) Steinbeck sticks (as he usually does) to the harsh environments of his native California in his most ambitious novel, in which he follows the path of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – as they face tragedy, love, evil, hope, glory, and most everything else.

Before the blogging days, before GBR, I’d go through phases. I’d get into a specific type of book or a specific author, and stick with them for months. I had a Russian phase. A Graham Greene phase. A Bernard Cornwell phase. And then there was John Steinbeck. Ahhhh, Steiny. The Steinmeister General. Jonny Steiner.

Yeah, I enjoyed my Steinbeck phase. It started ingloriously with Grapes of Wrath (which I trudged through, grumpily and with difficulty). But then, for reasons I forget, I persevered and picked up East of Eden. And I got a little bit excited.

Which is an odd word to use for Steinbeck. He’s not what you’d call an exciting writer. East of Eden is an epic. It doesn’t race along, but neither did it drag like Grapes of Wrath did for me.

In East of Eden, Steinbeck creates a stage with such vast potential and such deep meaning that the slightest plot developments come laden with meaning. His characters are the brooding type, but with cores that he reveals to you with such subtle clarity that they become so big and so real. I just got so damn drawn in to this. Happily trapped in Steinbeck’s whirlwind.

There’s a “big questions” aspect to this as well. To all the Steinbeck I’ve read actually. There’s a strong (but not overwhelming) thread of philosophy and theology to the arcs he creates. He doesn’t let it overtake the story; doesn’t allow his exploration of massive themes to harm the integrity of his characters and his plot. But it’s there, and it’s compelling, and it’s often beautiful.

There was one bit in particular, a whole page and a bit which I ended up underlining and reading back again and again. I recently got a bit upset when I realised that Mumford and Sons were also a fan of this section and expropriated the central word – Timshel – as an album name or some such thing (I don’t know exactly, I’m not massively down with the 6Music crowd, as you may have guessed). I felt as if I’d lost ownership of this whole section. Like it wasn’t a secret on my bookshelf that only I loved anymore. Which is dumb. This is Steinbeck. He’s a little bit famous, and I’m certain the whole Timshel thing has been debated and discussed a million times over by a million people.

But that’s the point. East of Eden absorbs you in a world that you feel privileged to be in. Steinbeck relates an entire landscape, and a cast of people who you love and you hate, and a story which you feel is yours alone. Yours to translate and find meaning in. Yours to wallow in. Yours to appreciate and be inspired by.

I’m cutting myself off there. I’m coming over all gushing.

10 GBR

One of the greatest books I’ve ever read. Good ole Steiny, the first 10 GBR of the year. It’s been coming. I’ve been waiting for a week where I hadn’t actually finished a book so I could go back and tell you about this. Totally worth it.

Next week, hopefully I’ll have finished the current biggie I’m on.

Amity & Sorrow - dripping in profundity

2013-03-24T08:30:00.000+00:00

Amity & Sorrow by Peggy Riley (Tinder Press: 2013). Two sisters are scooped up by their mother and are taken from their lives in a remote cult commune. They run, and they land on an equally remote farm. Riley tells us their story as they struggle to leave their old lives behind, and make big decisions about their new ones.

Try and define the word “profound.” Go on, try it. Bet you stumble. I mean, you might get there eventually, but it’s tough, right? That’s why those dictionary writers get the big bucks. Some words are just kind of ethereal (which is another example, by the way). We kind of just know the meaning. And we certainly recognise it when we see it.

Which is a roundabout introduction to what I thought of Amity and Sorrow. This thing has profundity dripping off it. It’s soaked in the stuff. I seemed to be in a constant state of breath-half-drawn-in.

The story and the plotting take a lot of the credit for this. But the writing was a big part too. It was just so damned tight. I’ve whined on about how much I love good, tight, bare writing in the past, so I won’t bore you with that again. Suffice to say this was written with very little flab involved, which made the emotion and the…well…profundity stick out all the more.

And Riley does something else I loved. Having stumbled unsuccessfully through two novels myself, one of my big worries in writing was whether or not I had enough plot to fill the book. I was constantly thinking whether I should go back a couple of stages in the story to give myself more grist for the mill.

No such amateur worries for Riley, oh no. She starts her story when most of the big stuff has happened. On page one, pretty much everything on the dustcover blurb has already taken place. Within a few pages, you know the big bits of everyone’s back story. Sure, she does spend time later going back and filling in more blanks, and a lot of the smaller back-story details get unfolded as the book goes on, but Riley wastes no time re-hashing the minutiae of the premise. That’s confident writing, and I liked it. It got me straight into the story, no messing.

It wasn’t perfect. The high quality of large chunks made the occasional slip bark out. For example, the main three characters are so deeply drawn and so identifiable that some of the supporting cast come off as a bit cartoonish, less care having gone into them. Also, the overall story is so heart breaking and fascinating that, by contrast, some of the specific events come off as awkward; against the grain of the wider context.

Nit picking, I know. But if there are nits to be picked, I might as well tell you about them. Wouldn’t want to send you off not knowing about the nits. That’d be impolite.

9 GBR

Woof! Just enough nits to stop short of a ten, but we’re well and truly back on the track of some good books after that dip in late Feb/early March.

Amity and Sorry isn’t out until the end of next week, (thanks go to the Tinder Press for furnishing me with an advance copy), but you can pre-order it on Amazon here.

Shakespeare's Local - crossing over

2013-03-17T08:30:00.000+00:00

Covers photograph badly in Kindle. Fact.

Shakespeare's Local by Pete Brown (Macmillan: 2012) - A history of the George Inn in Southwark, telling it's remarkable tale over many hundreds of years as it played host to some of histories greats and survived where many of its more famous contemporaries failed.

Crossover books are books of a specific (and usually niche) genre which win over a general audience. 50 Shades of Grey is probably one of the best recent examples, taking erotica to the masses. Harry Potter did a similar thing for Young Adult fiction. Lord of the Rings for fantasy.

In that sort of company, Shakespeare’s Local won’t set the world on fire. But it deserves a serious nod of appreciation. How do you make local history more appealing to a wide audience? Focus it on a pub, throw in (often drunken) anecdotes of some of history’s luminaries, and hey presto, you’ve got a crossover hit on your hands.

Well, that’s the thinking anyway. But does the UK’s most famous beer historian and commentator pull it off? I think so. Mostly anyway.

For starts, he doesn’t write like the historians you read in school. This is not a text book, with a “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened” approach. Pete Brown is way more conversational and entertaining than that. He warns you from the outset, giving you fair notice that he’s going to jump around a bit, include a few assumptions, litter the text with amusing footnotes.

In reality, he doesn’t jump around the timeline as much as he perhaps thinks he does, but he keeps it lively nonetheless. As soon as you think you might be hitting a sticky patch, where he might be forced just to recount a few dry historical happenings in order to make sure the book has some proper context, he whizzes off into another anecdote or another rant or another character portrait.

Maybe that's easier in a local history book anchored on pubs than it would be in a local history book about agricultural processes, but kudos nonetheless.

It’s all relative, of course. This is no thriller. Brown does what he can to inject drama, and an amusing analogy or quip is never too far away. But this won’t having you on the edge of your seat or rolling on the floor laughing. It’s a lively, colourful, entertainingly disjointed local history book, but it’s still a local history book.

So, if I’m 100% honest (and why wouldn’t I be), I reckon you still need to have at least a pilot light’s worth of interest in the subject matter before you pick this up.

Me, I enjoy a bit of history. I enjoy it more when a crossover historian like Brown is at the helm, and I enjoy it more when it’s about something fun (like pubs), but I enjoy the dry stuff sometimes too.

I’m not saying you need to be a popular history fanatic, glued to Simon Schama every time he’s on telly. Just that you need at least a little spark of interest, even if it’s been largely suppressed. If there’s ever been a tiny voice at the back of your head which sounds like a history geek but has struggled to make itself heard, this could be the book to let the little guy out on.

8 GBR

I originally gave this a 7, then remembered my Kindle-era rule of only buying the hard copy of stuff I give 8 or above to. At which point I realised I really wanted to own the hard copy of this, so it MUST be worth an 8. (Impeccable logic, which I defy you to pick apart).

Interesting aside on this – Brown had his laptop with ALL his work on the book stolen when he was 3 months away from deadline, so had to start from scratch. Still churned out an 8 GBR though. I’m pretty darn impressed with that.

Next week (if I finish it in time) a new release from the Tinder Press, which they were kind enough to send me an advance copy of (which makes me feel smug).

Fun running

2013-03-11T15:08:00.000+00:00

Where's GBR?

Brace yourself. You’re about to read the saddest request for sponsorship ever.

Me (and Mrs GBR and PaberBlogPrincess) are doing a fun run.

A 5km fun run. And in the words of Mrs GBR, 5k isn’t exactly climbing Kilimanjaro. She’s right, of course. Kilimanjaro is definitely more difficult. But I’m pretty sure no-one’s ever climbed it dressed as Where’s Wally!

Which is what we’re doing. A Where’s Wally Fun Run. All in the cause of the National Literacy Trust. A worthy (and satisfyingly relevant) charity. When we signed up, we thought we just had to pay an entrance fee, which would go to the charity. But in a last minute game of table-turning, it turns out we each have to raise a minimum £100.

So here’s the team sponsorship page. Go nuts. And if you don’t, you’re not allowed to look at the humorous pictures which I’ll post in a couple of weeks of the three of us dressed as Wally, in amongst a hundred more Wallys, all wishing we’d stayed in bed.

Train Dreams - not compatible with Come Dine With Me

2013-03-10T08:30:00.000+00:00

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (Granta Books: 2012). The story of a labourer in the American mid-west at the turn of the twentieth century. He leads a simple, happy life until tragedy strikes, and he recoils into an even simpler way of life on the edges of a rapidly developing country.

I felt bad for a few days after last week’s post. I mean, giving such a low score when at least a chunk of the blame for not enjoying the book was mine. I’m not saying I felt terrible; I’m sure Toibin will lose no sleep over it. But there was guilt there, no doubt.

So I made an effort with this next one. It’s another novella. Something that shouldn’t really take more than two or three sittings to read. So I made some time, and instead of five minute chunks here and there, I read this over a few hours. And hot dog, did it pay off.

This always had pedigree. It’s right there on the cover. “Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.” That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when a good writer is slap bang at the top of their game. It happens when an unholy amount of thought and craft has gone into a piece of work. It happens when something seemingly simple is given an indefinable, magic quality. It happens here.

Train Dreams reminded me in a pretty loud way of Steinbeck. And I’m a Steinbeck fan. I’ll tell you more about that one day (it still irks me that the one Steinbeck book on GBR is perhaps the only one of his I didn’t enjoy). But for the time being, suffice to say this book had a lot of the same qualities as Steinbeck’s best writing; a gritty American nostalgia, simple but huge characters, emotion packed between the lines like gun powder. All of that.

Not a lot really happens in this book. Well, maybe that’s not true. There are life changing events. But they’re presented in a stripped down, simple way. There’s very little quickening of pace, no dramatic crescendos. And the central protagonist is a hermit who spends most of his life living alone in the woods. I have no idea how, with such a style and with this sort of plotting, books like this don’t just end up being boring. Bad ones do I guess, but the good ones (such as this) sink you into their pages with such irresistible skill that you hoover them up, content simply to be part of this slow moving world. They have an authentic quality that entertains without needing to fall back on cliff hangers or plot twists or car chases.

And if I accept some blame for not enjoying The Testament of Mary, I’m also going to grab some credit for allowing Train Dreams to flourish. I sat and I spent time with this book. Quality reading time. And I’m fairly certain all that stuff – the magic atmosphere, the subtle emotion, the character depth – none of it would have come through in such a powerful way if I read a few pages at a time whilst Come Dine With Me is playing in the background.

8 GBR

Go get this, clear your Sunday afternoon, and enjoy. If your Sunday’s are booked up for a while though, don’t bother.

Next week, I turn back to some non-fiction (if I finish it in time). It’s pretty boozy non-fiction though, so that livens it up a little. (You’re intrigued now, right?)

The Testament of Mary - my fault, or his?

2013-03-03T08:30:00.000+00:00

The Testament ofMary, by Colm Toibin (Viking: 2012) Colm Toibin writes the story of Mary, using the first person voice. She is nearing the end of her life, and reminisces of the events and heartbreaks that have defined it, giving a mother’s perspective rather than a disciple’s.

Some books fly by. Each page feels like it’s slipping through your fingers as you rush towards the end. It doesn’t feel so much like reading the book as experiencing the story.

This was not one of those books. But, in all fairness, I need to shoulder some of the blame. More than any other book in recent memory, I read this in snatched five minutes here and there. I read this when tired, and I read it whilst a little sniffly (which is my entirely modest way of saying I had chronic man flu and nearly died). Any book, when read like that, would suffer.

And suffer it did. I never fully engaged with this, and it drifted away from memory pretty soon after I finished it.

It puts me in a bit of a difficult position in evaluating it. I can recognize some great aspects of this book. The premise is just plain great, and the writing is done with a very distinct, very consistent, and very strong voice. You get a clear impression of Mary as a mother and as an old woman, neither of which chimes with the more traditional image of her. She comes across as incredibly human, stubborn, and at times helpless. There’s mystery in the plotting (which is difficult as pretty much everyone knows this story), and Toibin paces it very well. He made the good decision to make this a novella rather than anything longer, which fits the book perfectly.

So, all of this I recognized. All of this I spotted, despite reading it in hurried bursts. And yet, despite seeing all of this, I still never really connected with the book. I never felt surrounded by it. I never thought it was a book I needed to go and yell about. And yes, some of that was my fault, but it’s Toibin’s too. He’s got all these tools at his disposal, but he uses them in an incredibly mechanical way. I struggled to see the art here. It felt like an exercise. One well executed, but without any real flair.

I’ll read this again one day. And I’m sure I’ll get it then. But first time through, whether through my fault or Toibin’s, this did not work.

4 GBR

Couple of rough ones in a row there. Pressure on next week now. I’m sure you’re all riveted to find out if we get back on track…

Bedlam - cheese and ham

2013-02-24T09:48:00.000+00:00

Bedlam by Christopher Brookmyer (Orbit: 2013) A Stirlingshire computer geek gets transported into a world seemingly made up of every computer game he's ever known. The mystery deepens as timelines get confused, and he finds himself in the middle of a battle, unsure what he's actually fighting for.

(one, two…wait for it…three) SCI-FI!!!

I haven’t done a proper sci-fi book on GBR yet. Not a proper one anyway. So when this came up on my Amazon-recommends list, I thought I’d take the plunge. Some guy stuck in a computer game world, battling his way through moral dilemmas and laser canons? Go on then.

Of course, the “stuck in a computer game” thing should probably have been left alone after Tron. They nailed it there. But what the hey, this sounded like fun, so in I went.

And thus repeated something that has become a worryingly familiar pattern of late. A book that I started out enjoying. And then quickly grew a little tired of. And ended up actually disliking really rather a lot.

The problem here is (and I say this with full awareness of how ridiculous I’m being) the believability of it. I don’t mean the plot. I’m happy to leave logic and skepticism at the door when sci-fi is concerned. I mean believability in the writing – the dialogue, the thought processes of the characters, the relationships that the story turns on.

And it started so well. In the first few chapters, I liked the wit on display. The geeky references (I especially liked a reference to Buffy season 6 episode 17). But it didn’t take too long before the wit started to curdle and take on a distinctly cheesy tone. The one liners, the out-there analogies, the quirky uses of language – it all ended up just coming off as hammed up. (Cheese AND ham? I really have been eating too many sandwiches recently. But you get my meaning).

It got to the point where I was reading this in a permanent state of cringe. There was just zero about the dialogue that was natural. Zilch. Every sentence dripped with premeditation, and was delivered without even an attempt at subtlety. Which may have been bearable if it was consistently funny. But it wasn’t.

I know, I know, it’s sci-fi, right? It should be allowed a bit of cheese. A bit of too-slick wit. A large helping of contrived come-backers that wouldn’t work in any other genre. I absolutely recognize that, but the problem is it doesn’t matter what the genre, if I’m left dreading what’s coming every time a piece of dialogue is opened, I’m just plain not going to enjoy the book. Brookmyre utterly failed to bed in the sci-fi hallmarks in a way that doesn’t have you begging for the book to end.

Wow, having typed that, it now seems a little harsh. The plot to this was decent. The concept was actually a bit brilliant. Some of the characters were decently well conceived (if not particularly convincingly presented). And…

No! No excuses. I have a pretty high tolerance for sci-fi cheese. I’ve been known to be partial to it in fairly large helpings in the past. Firefly does it well. Buffy does it well. Bedlam does not do it well.

3 GBR

I’ve not wanted to get to the end of a book so much in quite some time.

Next week, something a bit biblical. (Not the Bible).

The Innocents - an odd sandwich

2013-02-10T08:30:00.000+00:00

The Innocents by Francesca Segal (Vintage: 2013) Following the lives being lived in a Jewish enclave of North London, centred around Adam and Rachel, a young couple hurtling towards marriage until Ellie (Rachel’s prodigal cousin) comes on the scene and threatens to turn everything upside down.

Hmmmm, ok. I went on a bit of a turnaround with this book. I was pretty sold on it for a long time. I was humming along quite nicely, entertained by the story and the people and the world they lived in. And I’d pretty much decided this was a book I was going to enjoy; another high score for 2013, and a deserving winner of the Costa First Novel Award.

But then something pretty unprecedented happened. About three quarters through., I completely changed my mind. That’s pretty rare, no matter what you’re talking about – books, food, tv, whatever.

It’s like I had this great sandwich. A real piece of work that I was loving. I’d finished half of it and I picked the second half up with dripping mouth and wide eyes. I even continued to enjoy it, right up until I had about a quarter left.

Then it got all rubbish, and I spat the rest out. And I wondered what on earth I could have seen in the first half of the sandwich that got me going so much.

I know. That doesn’t happen, right? That’s complete make-believe. Good sandwiches are good – all the way through. But with this book, it happened.

I enjoyed it. A bunch. Then I didn’t.

I look back on the bits I enjoyed, and I see the flaws now. The plotting seems contrived. The protagonist is a twerp. Most of the supporting cast are cartoons.

But let’s give credit where it’s due. All of this was hidden from me for a while. Why? I think it’s because the writing is so good. Segal is talented, no doubt. Like mad talented. The writing is so tight and easy to read. I’ve heard time and again that the best writers make you forget they’re there, and that’s what Segal achieves here. She writes so well that you just experience the story, and don’t get distracted by anything else.

Also, the stage is pretty good. It’s a window on a whole community that I know very little about, and seeing how it works and the characters that drive it got me hooked for a while.

But then it all fell apart. The plot is driven by the ongoing moral dilemma of the protagonist who, (and I’m giving nothing away here that you won’t get from the dust jacket), is faced with a choice between a safe, lovely life and rocking the boat by running off with his wife’s cousin. It’s an interesting dilemma, but not one that I want to hear too much about. I found myself bored of it and of him. I wanted to tell him to get something done already. All the hmming and harrring – I really stopped caring. And once I stopped caring about that, all the other cracks started to appear as well.

Where does that leave us? Well, I’m not going to tell you this is a bad book. It isn’t. It’s well written. It has a good premise. And if you have a bit more patience than I do for the emotional dilemmas of others, then you could probably convince yourself it’s got a good plot as well. But I tripped towards the end of it, and all I was thinking during the last few pages was what I was going to read next.

In my mind, I was book-cheating on it already.

6 GBR

Above average, but only just.

Next week, well I’m not sure. What am I, a fortune teller? Get away from me.

Birdsong - a non-rambling opinion (mostly)

2013-02-03T09:01:00.000+00:00

My good looking copy, from
the Folio Society. I think I love
those guys (and Mrs GBR of course, who
bought it for me)

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (Hutchinson: 1993). Faulks gets stuck into WW1, following the life of Stephen Wraysford as he falls in a tragic kind of love before getting whisked away by the violent events of the early twentieth century.

So I didn’t post last Sunday. Sorry about that. I felt a bit worse for wear, then got distracted by Andy Murray, then by lunch, then by napping. Before I knew it, it was Monday again.

It’s probably a good thing, because this book needed time to settle. There’s a bunch I want to say about it, but I know you guys don’t have the longest attention spans, so I’ll reign in the more rambling of my thoughts. Well, I’ll try.

The big thing to say (and it’s something I didn’t realise until a few days after I finished the book) is that Birdsong gets under your skin. I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I put it down. I finished the last page and, days later, still felt myself daydreaming about some aspect of it or other.

I’ve talked before about how some books make that happen simply by being long, the logic being if you spend a month reading something, it’ll end up lodging in your brain by dint of its weight if not by its quality.

And, no doubt, Birdsong probably benefits from its length in the same way. But I think it’s more than that. Ordinarily, I’m a language junkie. The sure fire way to get me panting at a book is to make the language so rich it makes you short of breath (just ask Pierre). But Faulks doesn’t do that. There are no passages of explosive language. Instead, he gets you high on the detail.

He creates a scene, picks out some of its most subtle but beautiful components, then puts them under a microscope in a way that makes the people and places slap you in the face. It’s this careful choosing and expert exploiting of detail – not any bombastic wording – that got me hooked. It made this book stay with me long after I put it down.

Sorry, that was a bit of a rambling thought, but it felt an important one. And here’s two more (put more succinctly, just for you).

The characters in Birdsong are distinct, detailed, unusual and compelling. Almost ethereal, but without losing reality.

The pacing of the book is masterful. He softens you up with love story, and just when you’re starting to get bored of it, he plunges you into the WW1 trenches. And just when you’re getting bored of that, he takes you to the 1970s. And just when you’re getting bored of that, he wraps things up with high emotion and meaning.

Ok, so maybe not that succinct.

There were (there always are) downsides. Any book of this length is going to have treacly sections you just have to wade through. Any book with the well trodden ground of WW1 at its core will feel a little clichéd in parts.

But I can’t think badly of a book that drew me in as much as this. I can’t criticize a story that stayed with me and made me daydream for days afterwards.

9 GBR

Hot dog! It’s been a high scoring start to the year. I’m enjoying my reading a lot at the moment. Possibly too much, there seems little time for anything else.

Next week, a book which comes with the "Jewish Book of the Year" accolade to live up to. Let’s hope it does.

Put out More Flags - Waugh's killer combination

2013-01-20T09:31:00.000+00:00

The title page of my lovely old edition

Put out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh (Chapman & Hall : 1942) Between war being declared and things really hotting up, Britain went through a period of "phony war" where things didn't seem all that bad. Waugh takes his set of high society hang overs, led by the irrepressible Basil Seal, and shows their approach to this grand new folly. Driven by a sense of "what's-in-it-for-me", the jape of war has both comic and tragic effect.

At the risk of sounding like a 12-year old school girl, ohmygodohmygodohmygod! DBC Pierre emailed me yesterday. Subject line: Cowabunga. Apprently, "at the sweet end of a piss-up a friend brought your review of my book up on his phone." That's me he's talking about! He liked it. He said he'd raise a drink to me.

That's it. I'm done. I can stop this whole shebang now and die smiling.

What? You don't care who emailed me? It's Sunday morning and you want your weekly GBR review? Oh, OK then you demanding lot, here it is.

I went to the British Museum a couple of weeks ago. The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was an exhibition with a 5,000 year-old pot in it.

Five-freaking-thousand years old. Damn if that's not impressive. And this thing was elaborate. It blew my mind a little. All that time ago, someone made this, spent time on it, drank out of it, and there it was in front of me in a glass case.

A pot that had survived everything.

Whoever JAC Rupert was, he
bought this in '42

That’s how I feel about old books. Anything written in an entirely different circumstance to the one I’m reading it in. Words that someone wrote down a while ago, and there they are in front of me, surviving.

I say all this as it’s pertinent to Put out More Flags (I promise). You guys know I love a bit of Waugh. And so I was always going to love this too. The guy flaunted every aspect of his writing that I enjoy. It was satirical, slap-stick, absurd, flat-out funny, but with a heavy dose of poignancy as well. It was Wodehouse with purpose. And it was typically easy to tread. Waugh writes like he invented language, and knows exactly how it should be used.

So there was all that. Obviously. But there was something else as well. Put out More Flags was published in 1942. I know this because I was very kindly bought this old edition of it for my birthday, and it says 1942 right at the front. 1942 is a time that just plain fascinates me. In the grip of a war that has turned terrible. No idea if we’re going to win or not. Everything up for grabs.

And amongst it all, here’s Waugh with his cartoonish social set. A largely fictional upper class who are tripping from one aspect of the war to another. There’s truth in some of their reactions, albeit highly caricatured. And between the lines (which is where Waugh shines), there’s all this heavy heavy context of a war.

I know we won. And you know we won. But the words on these 70-odd year old pages had no idea. These words and the imagination that delivered them were entirely ignorant of how it would all play out.

The beautiful spine of my edition. Aren't
books great!

That was enough for me. I was sold. The painful contrast of Waugh’s humour with a deep pathos that’s just beneath the surface never stops fascinating me. I saw it first in A Handful of Dust (which was the 2011 GBRBOY by the way…). And here, it blew me away again.

In short, this guy has a killer combination. Funny as heck. A magical and distinct way with words. And the ability to sneak up on you and make you cry with a single phrase.

Now, I just need to figure out how he does it.

9 GBR

Why not 10 after a write up like that, I hear you cry? Honestly, because A Handful of Dust was my first Waugh blow out, and I guess it can never be quite as good as the first time.

Next week, I'm not quite sure as I'm currently trudging through a biggie.

NW - Zadie Smith is probably a witch

2013-01-13T08:30:00.000+00:00

Yeah, I have a Kindle now. What of it?

NW by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton: 2012). Zadie Smith tours North West London, introducing a series of characters whose identities are tied up in their surroundings. Hopping forward and back in time, Smith explains their lives as they try to grow out of the boundaries they were born into.

WITCH! Zadie Smith must be a witch, for there is magic here. Just a few drops, but enough to take something which, on the surface, shouldn’t be all that compelling, and make it a little bit brilliant.

Low grade witchery, maybe, but impressive.

First things first - forget the plot. There’s not much of it. There’s more in a paragraph of Grisham than in the whole of NW. Sure, there’s the odd spike of drama, and it speeds up towards the end. But it never feels dramatic. No screaming, no explosions, no cliff hanger moments. It all just melds into the pages like so many other words before it. And in between the spikes, we have long passages of such exciting adventures as "some guy buying a car" and "a suburban dinner party".

But Smith isn’t relying on plot. It’s not that kind of book. It’s the kind that successfully recreates a world which you become trapped in.

Trapped? OK, maybe not the best word. I don’t mean like Fritzl trapped. Trapped in a good way.

NW is, in large sections, inescapable. And it’s not because you’re desperate to find out what happens next. Not much ever happens next. It’s because the feel of the book is so complete and so authentic that you find yourself switching off from everything else and simply living there. Living with the North Londoners as they go about their daily business and reveal their dreams and fears to you drip by drip.

And make no mistake, it’s the place and not the people that is the star (calling the book NW was probably the giveaway there, genius). The people are interesting enough. They have dilemmas. They have under-the-surface emotional tension. But Smith doesn’t go to town in explaining every nook and cranny of their lives. This isn't a Kilburn version of EastEnders. In fact, she leaves a few blanks.

But the place, North West London and its social fabric – that is pretty complete. Not because of reams and reams of overt description, but because of the magic I mentioned. The witchery Smith uses to make you feel the place. Not just know it or understand it, but feel it.

It’s tough to explain, which is why Zadie Smith is Zadie Smith and I am not. I know when I talk about the power of atmosphere in a book, it can be interpreted as shorthand for boooorriiiinnng. Another way of saying not much happens. And to an extent, that could be true. I didn’t dive at this book in every spare five seconds I had. It didn’t scream “read me” with excitement. But whenever I did pick it up, I got trapped again in a place that felt worth spending more time in.

It’s not boring. It’s powerful without being explosive. It’s meaningful without being bombastic. It’s forceful without being shocking.

Which is tough to do. Magical even.

8 GBR

A pretty high score, stopping short of anything higher because the 9s and 10s are reserved for those books that leave you breathless and hungry. NW is special. But breathless and hungry? Not quite.

Next week, a bit of old school Waugh, because it’s been a while and I miss him.

Back to Blood - thawing a cool kid

2013-01-06T09:56:00.000+00:00

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe (Jonathan Cape: 2012) Tom Wolfe continues to try and live up to The Bonfire of the Vanities. The 81 year-old turns his journalistic spotlight on a flawed Miami, a city transformed by recent immigrants and struggling to cope with the problems the demographic shift has brought. It’s a world he explores through (amongst others) an ostracized Cuban cop, a Russian billionaire oligarch, a preppy Yale educated journalist, a professor trying to gentrify his Haitian background, and a larger than life black police chief.

Welcome back! It's 2013! And as we all trudge through January, the most depressing of all the months, let's try to get back to some sense of normality.

Sunday morning.

A new GBR post.

I approached this one a little nervously. It had that cool-kid aura. The kind that of kid who just has it. Doesn’t need to shout about it. This is a 700 page epic. Written by Tom Wolfe. It promised to lift the grimy lid on Miami, and explore racial tensions through an assortment of characters and plot lines.

It just felt way cooler than me. On a different strata.

So I tip-toed up to it. Worried it’d all fly over my head. That it’d be too complex, the writing too poetic, the social themes too distant.

I needn’t have worried. The cool kid soon melted, let me into his world, and swiftly got me thinking like him. No doubt there’s a lot going on in this book, but it’s kept in pretty good order by Wolfe, nothing getting too messy, too confusing. The social themes are attacked head on, with little sub-text (that I could spot, anyway). There’s not much interpretation needed by the reader; Wolfe lays it all out there on the page.

And his writing style? That’s what provided the handful of stand-out moments of the book for me. Wolfe has a sense for the senses. By which I mean he uses everything he can to put across sounds, smells, physical feelings - human experience. He creates rhythms. He gets creative with punctuation. He shifts font. Uses subscript. All the tricks in the book and one or two new ones to create passages that get as close to the real thing as he can. He drops it in bursts, flashes of poetry which remind you he’s speaking about real stinky people and real hot places.

And then, as with any aloof cool kid, the more I got to know this book, the more mystery it lost. Which was a shame. As the book wore on (and, at 700+ pages, it had a lot of wearing to do), it felt as if the plot simplified too much. The characters, so lively and real at the outset, slowly became simply devices to move the story on. Actors on a stage.

I guess I was expecting something bigger. I was expecting something flawless. And it wasn’t. There was too little majesty. Too little awe. There were flabby bits, sections which became over explained, and even a couple of unbelievable character developments towards the end.

Which is pretty harsh, I know. After all, there’s no denying the quality of this book. The story is genuinely gripping. Wolfe’s Miami is a compelling world. His small behavioural observations and grand social arguments make it all relevant (albeit ultimately too close to ordinary). And his language, his poetry, his journalism - it all makes it incredibly readable.

So what am I saying? I guess it’s that old problem of expectation again. If this book was written by an unknown, if it looked a little less ambitious, if it flew under the radar a little more, I’m sure it would have packed a bigger punch. I’m sure I’d have found it easier to focus on its good points than feel essentially disappointed at the end.

5 GBR

We kick of 2013 with a victim of expectation. Totally worth reading though, and you’ll probably enjoy it more than I did now I’ve lowered your expectations.

Next week, I’m not sure. I started Zadie Smith’s new one, but it’ll be a race to finish it by next Sunday. On the other hand, I do have a Kindle Paperwhite now, so I can read ANYWHERE!

Look out, world.

GBRYIR 2012 - because Christmas is all about giving

2012-12-23T08:30:00.000+00:00

Because this is what comes up when
you Google image "GBRYIR"

I hope you’re all enjoying your December and (like me) using the festive period as your annual excuse to eat, drink and be lazy.

And as if Christmas wasn’t enough to blow your mind once a year, now it’s time for the GBRYIR!!!! (That’s "Gav’s Book Reviews Year in Review", because we continue to love acronyms). Consider it my present to you, because I'm not getting you anything else.

It’s been a big year at GBR. We’ve diversified. We’ve had cards made. We’ve doubled our readership. We’ve started talking of ourselves in the third person. All major milestones.

But no one cares about milestones. You care about awards, right? Here you go then, you impatient, loveable lot. I've even gone link-crazy with it, because I'm so web-savvy.

Best “first”: This year saw a number of firsts for GBR. First book fair covered. First mid-week show review. The first ever 0 GBR score. But by far my favourite first was the first GBR Author Interview, with non-other than my personal man-crush Glen Duncan. He left me a voicemail when we were setting the interview up, and I still listen to it every now and then, misty eyed. Which sounds creepy. And probably is.

Most read review: For some reason, City of Thieves got a lot of love. I think it may have been because, for a short time, the pic I used came up at the top of Google Images results. So I may have to discount that as most read review. The most genuinely read review was How I escaped My Certain Fate. The first of the year, so it has a slight advantage in that it’s had more time to accrue readers, but we can’t blame it for that. In its defence, it did get an unholy amount of hits in its first few weeks as well.

I’m pretty happy with that. Maybe Stewart Lee will notice and we can become best pals now. It'd save me having to stalk him so much.

Most read post: This year’s diversification meant my most (genuinely) read post wasn’t even a review. It was the write up of seeing Wilbur Smith at the Edinburgh Book Fair. You guys couldn’t get enough of that. I’m fairly certain it was because of my very cheesy photo with him. Shame I had to spoil it all by really panning his book.

Got me weak at the knees, this one

Best book: No contest. There were three 10 GBR scores this year. One for American Gods. One for Vernon God Little. But the one book I can’t take my eyes off when I look at my bookshelf is Lights out in Wonderland.

It’s not a new book, just one I caught onto late. But I’m glad it’s in my life now. If anyone can knock Glen Duncan off top spot in my author affections, it might well be DBC Pierre. The guy can flat out write. His is the kind of writing that literally leaves your spine tingling and your heart racing. It's books like this that remind me why I read in the first place. I had to take rests to calm down. Honest to God, rests. You may have a different reaction. Because you may have bad taste in books. Which may not be your fault, but is something you should be ashamed of.

So the GBRBOTY (Gav’s Book Reviews Book of the Year) award for 2012 goes to Lights out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre. *crowd roars*

Worst book: Again, no contest. It goes to the only book I’ve felt compelled to give a 0 GBR score to. A book I found absolutely no merit in. A book I felt the need to warn you off. A book I felt guilt about panning, but thought it was the only thing I could do if I was to be entirely honest.

That book is Those in Peril. Let’s not waste any more time on it.

Best comment: GBR went comment-tastic this year, with a bunch from people I’ve never even met before. To be fair, there are an awful lot of people I've never met. The word, it seems, is spreading.

My favourite? To be serious for half a second, it was all of the ones left on this post. I was nervous writing it, but felt the need, so decided not to worry, and instead just write and see if it made me feel better. It didn’t.

Worst comment: Sorry Garth H Bairstow, but you’re a winner here. Mainly because of your apparent inability to Google a question to find the answer yourself:

Can you help. I am trying to find out in which of Wilburs books Sean Courtenay was killed by his son. Yours Faithfully Garth H. Barstow on Wilbur Smith at the Edinburgh Book Fest - "Don't tell anyone, but I've got a Kindle"

Remove content | Delete | Spam Garth H. Barstow on 05/10/12

So that’s that. Year two of GBR in the history books. We’ve come a long way since the first tentative post. (Yeah, I even linked to that one. POW!) Here’s to bigger and better things in 2013. And if not bigger and better, then at least more of the same.

HAPPY NEW YEAR CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY TIME EVERYBODY!!!

Puppet Shows - small and absurdly formed

2012-12-16T08:30:00.000+00:00

Puppet Shows by Michael Frissore (Writers AMuse me Publishing: 2012). A collection of short stories by a writer the Tuscon Weekly describes as “a very funny weirdo”. All of them are bizarre, and feature sock puppets regularly.

Last week, I got a bit grumpy at Kurkov. I fell a bit in love with his dry absurdity a few years ago, and felt he’d sullied what we had by trying to drag it out over a full length, epic novel. Such Tom-foolery doesn’t seem to be able to hold attention for long periods.

It’s like the original Star Trek in that way - fun and intriguing, but ultimately a bit boring if you’re forced to watch it for a full hour. (Yes, I’m very definitely on Team Picard, not Team Kirk. Unless you’re talking about the modern Krik. But I digress…)

So, in the search for something new and fresh and absurd and short, Twitter told me to pick Puppet Shows up.

Like a lot of Twitter suggestions, this is not mainstream fiction. It’s not mainstream anything. This guy is weird, and the stories he tells are every bit as bizarre. But from page 1, they’re fun. The stories are so far off the wall they’re in the garden somewhere.

Frissore should be praised for more than just his sense of humour though. There’s an incredibly fluent turn of phrase here; you can hear every word smoothly, without effort. The language is spare in places, but often lively and always interesting. It’s conversational, but if that conversation was being held by the two sharpest, wittiest people you know (who also happen to be loony tunes).

I don’t know if Frissore bangs this stuff out without sweat, or if he agonises over each syllable, but the effect is prose that’s as rewarding to read as it is funny.

There are sacrifices for such spoonfuls of farce, though. Lay your self down on such a silly alter, and there are things you have to throw out the window. For example, believability, and with it any lasting connection with characters.

In his zeal for the absurd, Frissore also slips into a random-word-generator trap sometimes. There are elements inserted sometimes simply because of how out of place they appear. It only sticks out very occasionally. For the most part, Frissore manages to keep these in the realms of relevance, but occasionally my eyes rolled ever so slightly at attempts to insert a wacky ingredient.

It’s a difficult plate to spin though, creating something both worthwhile and absurd. And in many of these stories, Frissore nails it. One or two heart strings are even plucked subtly, with a three word flash of emotion dropped in amongst a chaotic tale.

But let’s not take for granted the most important point - the funny. Every story amused me, and all of them were cut off at just about the right time. There were one or two which could even have been longer. After Kurkov’s long disappointment, Frissore reaffirmed my belief that such whimsy (that’s right, I used the word whimsy, what of it?), screams loudest and most perfectly in rich, short bursts.

8 GBR

Really fun.

Next week, it’s the GBRYIR (Gav’s Book Reviews Year in Review). I know it’s the highlight of your Christmas. Don’t even try to deny it.

The Milkman in the Night - I was not grabbed. I was barely pawed.

2012-12-09T08:30:00.000+00:00

The Milkman in the Night by Andrey Kurkov (Harvill Secker: 2011 - first published in Ukraine in 2009) A series of interweaving stories based in modern Ukraine, involving a resurrected cat, an anti-wimp drug, an underground cult, unexplained sleepwalking, an embalmed husband, and lots of milk (though not necessarily in that order).

That sounds a lark, eh? All those bizarre plot ingredients. Ripe for a bit of Andrey Kurkov fun, I’ll bet.

That’s exactly what I assumed. I’m a Kurkov fan. I enjoyed Death of a Penguin. It was short and almost perfect. So this seemed worth looking forward to.

I probably should have left it there. But I had to go and spoil it. I had to wade into another Kurkov which, from the outset, warned me it was going to be different. It was longer than any other Kurkov I've picked up, which was a red flag to start with.

It's not entirely different, I guess. There are still many of the hallmarks I loved the first time around. The Milkman in the Night has a similar sense of humour as Kurkov’s previous writing. His feel for the absurd is still there, and he continues to make you feel something approaching warmth for his simply presented, innocently motivated characters. They’re almost two dimensional at times, but it gives them a strange sort of appeal. Not quite pity, but something in the same family.

So he played around with the same ingredients, and he did so through a handful of cleverly interlinked stories.

But no! I have to stop myself there. I’m in danger of persuading myself this wasn’t that bad after all. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either. There were sections where I got bored, which is pretty much the one sin I find tough to forgive in a book.

With the possible exception of Irina, I struggled to care what happened to each of the characters. Trying to sustain the sort of farcical story lines Kurkov is so expert at weaving through a long novel like this is an incredibly tough ask, and not one I think The Milkman in the Night answers very successfully.

I just didn’t enjoy this. I can sit down and I can tell you all the reasons why this should be good. I could tell you the bits I did enjoy. I could laud his humour and the serious points that lie underneath it. I could probably sell this book to you if I put enough heart into it. But none of it escapes the fact that at no point was I tempted to stay on the train for an extra stop to read a bit more.

It provides a complete counterpoint to JK Rowling’s latest mega-book in a lot of ways. With The Milkman in the Night, I should enjoy it but didn't. With Rowling, I’d struggle to tell you exactly why I enjoyed The Casual Vacancy. I shouldn’t have. But I did. Rowling’s story telling prowess compelled me, and I looked forward to picking it up every chance I got.

That didn’t happen with this. I was amused. At a couple of points, I was touched. But for a 474 page book, there needs to be a whole lot more than that. It needs to make you care. Compel you to read on. It needs to grab you in a way that sustains you through each turn of the page.

I was not grabbed. I was barely pawed.

5 GBR

Good bits, but not enough of them.

Next week, a complete surprise (mainly because I have no idea what it’ll be yet. I have six books all staring at me waiting to be read - I may have to flip several coins).

C - making me feel upper-mid-brow

2012-12-02T08:55:00.001+00:00

C by Tom McCarthy (Jonathan Cape: 2010) This book follows Serge Carrefax as he anchors his life to the key developments of early 20th century technology, with the radio at it’s core. He spends much of his life trying to understand his existence, the nature of loss, and his own inherent sadness. Pathos galore.

As I’m only half way through my current read, I looked at my bookshelf and decided to tell you about this book instead.

Partly because last week's book had a ridiculously long title, and this has the shortest of anything I've ever read, and I like that joke. But it also stands out because it makes me feel guilty, more than any other book on my shelf.

Why guilty? Because I just didn’t get it.

I really didn’t. And I know there’s something to get. People whose opinions I trust have told me how great this book is. It has given rise to praise which is embarrassing at times. It’s nearly two years since it was published, and it’s still drawing applause, which makes me think it stands a chance of living a long time in the public mind.

So, clearly, there’s big biscuits to be had here. I just couldn’t reach them.

It’s possibly because this has a high brow, post modern style that I struggle with. I’ve never studied “literature” in any sort of serious academic setting. I don’t have the tools to navigate a narrative which is deconstructive, and avoids any traditional hint of character and plot. I try, I really do. And I like to think I’m a fairly fast learner with my own fair share of common sense. But as I was reading C, it felt as if there was a huge point being made which remained hidden from me as a member of the low-brow (or at least mid-brow. Is there an upper-mid-brow? If so, that’s probably where I’d nestle).

All of which makes me feel guilty. Or dumb. Or both.

And then, earlier this year, I read another post-modern, terribly academic novel in Umbrella. And I found myself enjoying it much more. Yes, the long periods of confusion remained, but they were broken up by beautiful bits which grabbed me, and even the confusion seemed to have a purpose and a meaning by the last page.

I never got that with C.

So maybe it’s not the style that is all to blame. If I can enjoy Umbrella, maybe there’s something else about C which made it fall down for me.

For example, I never found myself connecting with the characters in the same way as I did with Umbrella. There are eccentricities baked into the plot and the people which kept me constantly off-balance, and not in a good way. There’s a metaphysical core to a lot of what happens that I never bought into the way I ought to have done.

It wasn’t entirely lost on me. I don’t want you to think I didn’t enjoy this simply because I missed the point completely (though clearly I did a bit). The big arcs, the emotion, the central themes - I spotted some of these and understood them to a point. But I never believed them. The subtleties that make you really connect with a book never came. The detail and the empathy they illicit remained annoyingly out of reach.

Maybe you’ll read this and you’ll get it better than I did. Maybe you’re better armed to unpick its worth.

3 GBR

I don’t mind putting in effort for a book. But I need something back. I found this tough, and never felt my effort was rewarded. The flashes of brilliance never struck me.

Only 3 and a bit weeks until Christmas, which means the GBRYIR is on its way. It also means the decorations are up in my and Mrs GBR’s flat. And we’ve had mince pies. And I’m wearing my Christmas hat. Try not to be too jealous.

The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared - maybe the title's too long?

2012-11-25T08:30:00.000+00:00

The Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson (Hesperus Press: 2012). A bizarre tale of a man who traversed the 20th century, inadvertently influencing world events as he goes. As he turns 100, he escapes from his own birthday party to embark on a last adventure, involving a criminal gang, a suitcase full of money, an elephant, and multiple murders.

I’m never sure with translations. I’m a mono-linguist - I can order a cup of coffee in

Germany

, but that’s about it. So I have no idea how the process of translating a book goes.

Surely the translator takes on a lot of responsibility for tone and style? “Feel” is an important (if unhelpfully vague) characteristic for a book. How do you make sure you’re getting the same one in both languages? How do you make sure you achieve in English what the writer was going for in Swedish?

I bring this up because as far as “feel” goes, I loved this book. It reminded me strongly of another writer who also relies on translation - Andrey Kurkov. Both Kurkov and Jonasson write with an incredibly spare, matter of fact, short, punchy, frank style. I love it. It’s unadorned and achieves an innocent effect.

It fits perfectly with the straightforwardness of the main protagonists, and it contrasts neatly with the surrealism of the story lines - the bizarre twists and turns. Nothing is heralded with a chorus of trumpets. Everything is simply related as if it’s the most ordinary tale in the world (though of course it’s not).

But are Kurkov and Jonasson two writers with the same style, or do they just have similar translators? Or maybe Swedish and Ukrainian are simply very economic languages, and all Swedish and Ukrainian books are like this? Somebody could probably tell me the answer, but as of right now, I do not know.

I probably shouldn’t care. I should probably have stopped at “I loved this book”.

Whatever the reason for the style and tone, it grabbed me and it didn’t let me go. It’s a long-ish book (around 400 pages), but it didn’t grow old for me (pun entirely intended). I smirked every time Allan Karlsson got out of a tight corner with nothing more than a brand of naïve logic. I was intrigued every time he met another world figure without showing an ounce of awe. I grew fonder of him every time he related his incredibly simple outlook on life. His quirks and the quirks of those around him entertained me from beginning to end. The end itself was perhaps a little drawn out, with Jonasson continuing to mutter on for a few pages after the story itself was clearly finished, but I'll forgive him that.

I know people who disagree. I know people who got irritated with the lack of plausibility. People who feel this is a book with a neat trick which it plays far too many times. And I can see their point. That’s the problem with absurdity - it can have a short shelf life. But tell that to Dickens and the Pickwick Papers. Tell that to Evelyn Waugh andto P.G. Wodehouse. If it’s done well, a little farce can go a long way.

I really enjoyed Andrey Kurkov when I first found him. Jonasson seems a pretty close contemporary of his. OK, so I don’t have the same feel that I’ve uncovered a hidden gem - this book has been in the hand of a lot of commuters in the last few months. But that didn’t take the shine off for me.

Bottom line - I enjoyed reading this, and I hope you will too.

8 GBR

Deserves at least as much as Death and the Penguin.

Next week, I may have to enny-meeny-miny-mo it. I have another Kurkov lined up waiting to be read, and Tom Wolfe is staring at me menacingly from my book shelf as well.

Astray - short story tastic

2012-11-18T10:33:00.000+00:00

Astray by Emma Donoghue (Picador: 2012) A collection of short stories by Irish writer Emma Donoghue. All based on real people and real events, Donoghue shines a light onto the lives of a series of people who have all gone astray, crossing borders of nation, sex, race, law, sanity, etc.

Read the GBR interview with Emma Donoghue here.

She does a good job of making you pick a book up, Donoghue. The only other of hers that I’ve read, Room, had such a compelling premise that I fair sprinted to turn over the front cover and get going. Astray, too, has an intriguing sell – a series of historical fiction short stories, all focussing on people who have strayed beyond the boundaries of ordinary life in some profound way.

I like that.

And I like that this is done as a collection of short stories. It seems apt. Little snippets of lives, one after the other. It keep you a little dislocated as you’re going through it. You don’t spend days and days in the company of single stories, getting comfortable with motivations and setting. Just as you feel you’re starting to understand the meaning behind the latest tale, Donoghue whisks you away to the next.

It’s a showcase for Donoghue’s talent as well. Each story is distinct. Each voice authentic. Short stories they may be, but Donoghue gives a complete picture of each person she tells us about. Sometimes she does it through careful description, and sometimes she does it by simply writing in such a true way that the language gives you a distinct feel for the people.

I’m piling up points in the pro column here. The plots should go there too. Donoghue has corralled such a disperse but vital set of outcasts that each story grabs, often in different ways. There are explanatory notes at the end of each story and at the end of the book, constantly reminding us these tales are based on real people and real events. She shows where she takes artistic licence, but pushes home the point that the crux of these stories and the lessons she tries to show through them are real.

That’s the fascination of historical fiction. It may be dramatised and it may not be 100% real, but enhanced or not, the lessons are the true. And Donoghue has done a good job of picking some honest to goodness fascinating episodes, and enhanced them beautifully with her own talent.

So those are the pros. I’m going to paint myself out of the corner though. A little, at least. I got to the end of Astray and was desperate to pick up a novel again. I love short stories when in the mood, but reading a collection from beginning to end tends to leave me with a need to invest in something more substantial again. Not Donoghue’s fault, more a weakness of the format, but true all the same.

And then there’s the living-up-to-the-premise challenge. It was the major problem I had with Room (though that kicked in with an 8 GBR). And I recognised it again here. Astray promises to show us a diverse range of characters with a common theme – they’re all astray in society. I struggled to follow the common thread though. There was such an opportunity here to tie these stories together so much more than they are. It would have helped overcome that short story weakness I mentioned – the feeling you’re never investing in anything chunky. But as far as I could see, the opportunity was missed.

The stories were too disparate. The structure suggested by the title of the collection and the blurb on the dust jacket seemed a little manufactured, a little imposed. I enjoyed each individual story, some of them immensely, but I felt short changed there wasn’t a wider arc around them. A wider meaning. When I interviewed the author, she mentioned the stories were written over many years. This made sense. It felt like they were all picked up and then a common thread was looked for, rather than written with the wider structure in mind.

Which is all a little harsh. The con column at the moment has only two things in it – one is a weakness of all short stories, and the other is a weakness of composition. The individual stories in here are incredibly strong. But both cons were enough to leave me feeling just ever so slightly flat by the time I turned the last page.

7 GBR

Donoghue is an amazing writer. Really she is. I like her a lot. I might go back and read some of her earlier stuff. And Astray is really good, but falls short of amazing.

Next week, a book I’m reading on the recommendation of a GBR reader. So if it sucks, it’ll be your fault.

The GBR Interview: Emma Donoghue - shapeshifter

2012-11-15T20:24:00.000+00:00

A new concept presented itself to me via a tweet the other day (in between Chris Addison and Robin Ince's constant twittering). Musicians have a “jam”. Artists continually “doodle.” But what do writers do? “Word vomit” was presented as a solution, but I’m not sure I like it.

Whatever the term is, all writers must do it. Get ideas and start bashing out some words around it, with no real intention for it to go anywhere or to take any real form – just playing.

Which is why Emma Donoghue’s ideas struck a rather large chord for me when we chatted. “I don't sit down with a format in mind. I try to respond to my material. I listen to an idea and to what it asks me to be. When I began it, I thought Slammerkin [Donoghue’s 2000 breakthrough novel] was a short story. It turned out it wanted to be a novel”

This whole idea struck me right in the forehead. Too many times, people go stright to "novel." They shouldn't. Just start with an idea and follow it wherever it takes you. It might just be a word vomit. Or it mind end up being a radio play.

Here’s a writer who has is bang in the middle of a long and successful career. She’s shapeshifted through turns at being someone who writes straight fiction, historical fiction, short stories, stage plays, radio plays – you name it, Emma Donoghue has had a crack. “If I ever come up with an idea that seems like it’ll work best as an opera, I guess I’ll have to learn how to write an opera.” This was a joke, but I absolutely believe she’d do it.

I believe it because it’s entirely apparent Emma Donoghue loves what she does. “It’s such a pleasure to write. I try to stay open minded, but novels are still my default position. You get to call all the shots. I’m like a child playing when I’m on a novel.” Having recently finished reading Donoghue’s latest volume of historical fiction short stories, Astray (GBR review to come soon...), I can testify that she’s pretty good at spinning mini tales as well.

That’s not to say it’s all easy for her. Astray is a set of stories with such ranging voices, such different feels, that it’s slightly exhausting to navigate. Each story strikes a true tone, so much so that Donoghue has been labelled one of fictions greatest ventriloquists. “That’s not something that comes easily,” she told me. “I do a lot of research into each character, every word needs to be true. I have to work at it, otherwise they they’d all end up as chatty and Irish.” Donoghue is chatty and Irish. That’s why that comment made sense.

Donoghue changes styles, perspectives, eras and method throughout the collection, perhaps an echo of her varied career to date. Successful as that career has been though, she only really arrived at the household-name level in 2010 with the Man Booker nominated Room.

I wondered if Room’s success has started to irk her, like the band with a twenty album back catalogue who are continually forced to sing the breakthrough hit they had twenty years ago. “I’ve thought of that analogy myself,” said Emma, (who I felt I could call by her first name, now that we’d bonded over a commonly conceived analogy). “I’m not sick of it though. It opened up a new audience for me, and I’m still doing readings of it now. In thirty years time, I may be a bit sick of it, but not yet. I knew from the start it was the strongest idea I’d ever had, so I had a feeling it would do well. People really care about Jack [the boy at the centre of Room]. I get letters from people saying they’re just like him, that they can identify with him. It’s been very rewarding.”

I segued our chat awkwardly away from Room and towards something I’ve been preoccupied with ever since Will Self told me he couldn’t care less about the reader experience. I can’t seem to interview an author without asking their opinion of Self’s doctrine. So I succumbed again. “I try not to allow the reader to have any censoring effect. I try to hear them at a technical level. I think of the reader as me, but me who hasn’t read the book yet.” That’s a neat idea. Me who hasn’t read the book yet. I like it. And it seems to work for Donoghue.

My half hour was up. I hastily asked my so what are you reading now final question. “Bring up the Bodies,” came the reply. “Then I’ve got a book by Zadie Smith lined up. And I’ve recently finished another Lee Child.”

I put the phone down with a strong sense of a writer who loves what she does. A writer who continues to find new ways to interest herself in her material. And a writer who isn’t afraid to follow that material into new mediums. A writer, in short, who should be admired for her approach every bit as much as for her talent.

The Lighthouse - you only get what you give

2012-11-11T10:17:00.000+00:00

The Lighthouse by Alison Moore (Salt Publishing: 2012) Futh, recently seperated from his wife, decides to take a walking holiday through

Germany

. Along the way, he briefly meets Esther, a bored wife who runs a hotel with her husband. The Lighthouse explores the lives of both through a series of flashbacks to their formative experiences.

See the GBR interview with Alison Moore here.

There are a few words that pop up in a lot in reviews for The Lighthouse. “Atmospheric”. "Melancholy”.

They're all well earned descriptions. This is a sparse book. There are absolutely no explosions, no glorious resolution. Just the slow exploration of two characters whose only links seem to be their deep rooted sadness and their affection for a lighthouse shaped perfume bottle.

Not the stuff to make you jump out of your seat.

But these 192 pages made their way to the Man Booker Prize Shortlist. And I can see why. There’s a great deal of simple power about the way Moore writes. That's something which constantly fascinates me about good writing. When someone is able to create such a specific and complete mood using only the black and white of words on a page. Moore writes incredibly economically. The language is simple, the sentences clipped. But they're so carefully chosen and put together that there's a consistent and effective feel from beginning to end.

Moore is also continually playing a game of tag with the reader's imagination, leaving truck sized gaps between the lines for you to fill in. There aren't page long descriptions of exactly how someone is thinking. No long running sentences on the minutiae of scenery. The odd plot point is left unsaid, trusting you'll infer it properly.

Which sounds like a jerk thing to say. "It's not about what she writes, it's about what she doesn't." I know that sounds like an up-yourself, painfully art-house observation, and I can honestly say I've never fully grasped the importance of the concept before. But Moore plays the card so expertly that I think I get it here. She weaves a tale which, on the surface, is fairly pedestrian, but because of the mood she creates and the questions she poses, I found myself nontheless gripped.

The issues in play and the emotions attached to them grow under the influence of Moore's writing.

There's a danger here, of course. Let this pathos, this between-the-lines beauty pass you by, and you're left with a pretty bland narrative. Read this on a crowded train for ten mins every day, without giving it your full attention, and you could easily miss the value of it. I'm not saying it's too obscure, that Moore has hidden the nuggets too deeply; just that you need to engage your own brain a little when reading this. This isn't a book where you can just sit back and expect to be entertained. It isn't a thriller or a crime novel. You need to put a little of yourself in it as well. Only a little, not a lot, but some, all the same.

It's totally worth it though. Let yourself get hooked at the beginning, and you'll be treated to some highly individual characters. Some fascinating and well developed psychology. A building, barely under-the-radar tension that remains taught thoughout.

Fail to get hooked at the beginning though, and you'll get bored. No doubt about it. But it's a pretty short book. So totally worth taking the punt.

8 GBR

I need to read something bad soon. There's been a glut of good scores in the last month or so. Maybe we all deserved it after the Wilbur Smith debacle. But if I'm not careful, you'll start thinking I don't mean it when I give a high score. I do. 8 GBR is a mark of a book that I hugely enjoyed. One that I'll pick up again at some distant date and re-read. One that will stick in my mind. A book I think you should pick up too (which is, after all, the point of all this).

I just seem to be reading a lot of them at the moment.

Next week, another interview+review double header. Bet you can't guess who.