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55
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| 0007498772
| 9780007498772
| 0007498772
| 3.77
| 23,992
| 1962
| Jan 17, 2013
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liked it
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Revisited for Mookse Madness 2019 "I keep four notebooks, a black notebook, which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook, concerned with po Revisited for Mookse Madness 2019 "I keep four notebooks, a black notebook, which is to do with Anna Wulf the writer; a red notebook, concerned with politics; a yellow notebook, in which I make stories out of my experience; and a blue notebook which tries to be a diary." The Golden Notebook has a reputation as a "difficult" novel, but is actually a relatively straightforward read, with the aid of this helpful guide from the narrator. The main novel itself is interspersed with excerpts from the notebooks kept by the main character, the author Anna Wulf. The edition I read came with an enlightening introduction from the author herself, written in 1971, 9 years after the novel's publication, explaining what she had been trying to achieve and expressing her frustration that most critics and readers missed the point. Where Lessing has succeeded best in her aims is in recreating "the intellectual and moral climate" of the mid 20th century, albeit amongst the rather limited milieu of the Marxist and socialist community around the time of Stalin's death. Indeed perhaps she has succeeded better than originally intended since parts of the novel feel now, fifty years later, extremely dated. In particular she captures well the rather pretensions of the British communists at the time, albeit one suspects the author didn't realise quite how irrelevant they would become over the following decades. The following is Anna's friend's description of a breakaway group, but could equally apply to the main British Communist Party: "There are a few hundred of them, scattered up and down Britain, yet they all talk as if Britain will be socialist in about ten years at the latest, and through their efforts of course. You know, as if they will be running the new beautiful socialist Britain that will be born on Tuesday week" Lessing also succeeds well in addressing the issue of writer's block and the false pressure, particularly in the socialist circles in which the novel is set, for art to be objective and universal. As Anna complains: "I can't write that short story, or any other, because the moment I sit down to write, someone comes into the room. looks over my shoulder, and stops me. It could be a Chinese peasant. Or one of Castro's guerilla fighters. Or an Algerian. fighting in the FLN. Or Mr Mathlong (*). They stand here in this room and they say, why aren't you doing something about us, instead of wasting your time scribbling". (* a ficticious Mandela like figure) Lessing's main complaint is that friendly as well as hostile reviewers "belittled" the novel as about the "sex war", which was not her intention: "this novel was not a trumpet for Women's Liberation. It described many female emotions of aggression, hostility, resentment. It put them into print. Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing, came as a great surprise." And the feminist angle is where the book again feels dated. The two main characters are odd feminists, single and sexually liberated, but using their "freedom" largely to be the passive recipients of the attentions of any passing married man. And as another reviewer noted, it's not even clear the novel passes the "Bechdel" test as while there are large parts with two women talking, they are mostly talking about men. Lessing's main focus however was the "theme of 'breakdown', that sometimes when people 'crack up', it is a way of self-healing, of the inner self's dismissing false dichotomies and divisions". This is most explicit in Anna's use of the four separate notebooks. "Why the four notebooks? What would happen if you had one big book without all that divisions and brackets and special writing?" "I've told you, chaos" "... you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that's what they are. I don't think there's a pattern anywhere - you are just good at making patterns out of cowardice." The novel culminates in Anna's relationship with the American left-winger Saul Green. On first hearing about him "Anna joked that if he was an American, he would be writing an epic novel, be in psycho-analysis, and in the process of divorcing his second wife", a rather accurate summary indeed of most of the male characters in the novel. Here Lessing has Saul and Anna "'break down' into each other, into other people, break through the false patterns they have made of their pasts, the patterns and formulas they have made to shore up themselves and each other, dissolve." culminating in the fifth, Golden, Notebook. Clearly Lessing sees this as the heart of the novel, indeed she remarks rather sarcastically that reviewers missed this "I believed that in a book called The Golden Notebook the inner section called The Golden Notebook might be presumed to be a central point, to carry the weight of the thing, to make a statement. But no.". Unfortunately the Golden Notebook section was to me the weakest of the novel. It is difficult to convincingly portray mental break down when the narrator is the person breaking down, and Lessing doesn't really succeed here. ...more |
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not set
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Aug 11, 2015
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Apr 14, 2017
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Paperback
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79
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| 194114750X
| 9781941147504
| 194114750X
| 3.15
| 60
| unknown
| Feb 24, 2015
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it was ok
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"These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world; the theatre of your imagination. The scripts are provided. Ev
"These tiny plays are offered here for performance in the smallest theatre in the world; the theatre of your imagination. The scripts are provided. Everything else - casting, set design, ice-cream sales - is up to you." Matchbox Theatre is certainly a visually striking book - designed to look like a matchbox complete with slip case. But to me the content wasn't particularly striking - overall it felt more designed as a Christmas stocking filler for a literary minded recipient than a serious work of literature. Frayn has in the past written some very intellectually stimulating plays (/book/show/4...), and by contrast this feels very lightweight. The concept is 30 miniature plays, all in the form of dialogue, intended to be performed in the "theatre of your imagination". Frayn plays on this theme in the book itself, adding some meta-commentary in the playlet called Interval: "� So we’re in a book? � For the moment. Or a theatre, of course. Or neither. Or both. It’s that kind of thing." Except in practice, this read simply as they are. Scripts of plays that would be work better if actually performed on stage, and indeed the book has subsequently become a stage show. Some of the 30 or so have some clever ideas. E.g. my favourite featured a person whose job was to ring up the Nobel Prize winners to tell them they've won, except his opening lines ("Congratulations! You have won the...", "Our records show that you are entitled to a substantial payment...", "Your name has come up on our computer...") lead to the about-to-be-Laureates hanging up immediately. But even that peters out in a lame joke. And I enjoyed "Prompts" - a lady struggling to resist correcting an accidentally Spoonerism filled conversation at the neighbouring table between two people discussing holidays ("Holonunu" etc). But too many of the stories seem to go over the same ground. Frayn too often falls back on the same device - married couples who complete each other sentences based on what they expect the other to say. And the rituals of the theatre itself are a too common topic, of less interest to most readers than to the author himself. The net effect is that despite the individual pieces being so short (typically 5-10 pages) many feel dragged out past the length that the underlying idea justifies. For a much better literary version of a similar idea, I would point readers to Will Eaves's excellent The Absent Therapist /review/show.... ...more |
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not set
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Nov 30, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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Paperback
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78
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| 0802170390
| 9780802170392
| B001LF2H7W
| 3.14
| 25,367
| Mar 01, 2007
| Sep 10, 2007
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it was ok
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"I have my children about me and my husband at my side, and I walk back into yet another family gathering; every single one of them involving ham sand
"I have my children about me and my husband at my side, and I walk back into yet another family gathering; every single one of them involving ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and butter, and supermarket coleslaw, and cheese-and-onion crisps for the side of your plate. There are cocktail sausages and squares of quiche, and fruit salad for Mossie, who complains about trans-fats. There are Ritz crackers with salmon pâté and a single prawn on top, others with a sprig of parsley over a smear of cream cheese. There is houmous for Kitty or Jem, whichever one of them is vegetarian this week, in a trio of dips with guacamole and taramasalata. There is my smoked salmon, and Bea’s lasagne, and fantastic packet jelly wobbling in little glass bowls, made by my mother with quiet deliberation and left to set the night before." Anne Enright's The Gathering won the Booker Prize in 2007, beating off a strong short list including Mister Pip (/review/show...), Darkmans (/review/show...), On Chesil Beach (/review/show...) and the Reluctant Fundamentalist (/review/show...) (and Animal's People, which I haven't read). And her most recent novel, The Green Road, was longlisted for the 2015 Booker and featured heavily on many end of year "Best of..." lists but was surprisingly omitted from the shortlist. Now I may well be suffering from Booker fatigue having read this year's shortlist followed by three former winner, but The Gathering felt like a book reverse engineered to win the Booker. The narrator, Veronica, starts by telling us: "I would like to write down what happened in my grandmother’s house the summer I was eight or nine, but I am not sure if it really did happen. I need to bear witness to an uncertain event. I feel it roaring inside me � this thing that may not have taken place. I don’t even know what name to put on it. I think you might call it a crime of the flesh, but the flesh is long fallen away and I am not sure what hurt may linger in the bones." She may well want to write it down, but the constraints of the novelist's art means that we take 143 annoyingly circuitous pages to get there - and then the rest of the book deconstructs what may - or may not - have happened. The novel also rather uneasily blends three strands that didn't entirely cohere: a largely imagined account of Veronica's family history dating back to how her grandparents met, the present day Gathering of the family diaspora for her brother's wake, and Veronica's own personal life. The most potentially interesting was the last, as the book was written in 2007, at the height of the Irish booming economy, and Veronica is a representative of the newly wealthy middle class. But this part is least well developed, and you would also look in vain that the narrator or author had any prescient insights into the crash that was to follow. For the other parts, Enright's narrator is not unaware of the clichés of her family situation, but that doesn't make them any the less clichéd. "There is always a drunk. There is always someone who has been interfered with, as a child. There is always a colossal success, with several houses in various countries to which no one is ever invited. There is a mysterious sister. These are just trends, of course, and, like trends, they shift. Because our families contain everything and, late at night, everything makes sense. We pity our mothers, what they had to put up with in bed or in the kitchen, and we hate them or we worship them, but we always cry for them." Overall, I couldn't help but feeling that this was exactly the type of book Marlon James, the writer of the much more interesting 2015 Booker winner, was thinking of as "suburban, astringent, very crafted kind of story...wallowing in its own middle-style prose and private ennui" () ...more |
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not set
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Dec 03, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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Paperback
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73
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| 059307517X
| 9780593075173
| 059307517X
| 3.71
| 251
| Mar 26, 2015
| Oct 01, 2015
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it was ok
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It's a shame that the publishers chose not to replicate the green ink in which this book was clearly written. And rather tempting to misquote a quote,
It's a shame that the publishers chose not to replicate the green ink in which this book was clearly written. And rather tempting to misquote a quote, itself misattributed to Samuel Johnson: "The policy prescriptions in this book are stimulating and sensible. But what is stimulating is not sensible: what is sensible is not stimulating." Murphy has many sensible things to say about what a tax system is designed to achieve. But I don't think his principles are as contentious as he himself seems to think. What is contentious is the ability to implement them in a large, complex, open and largely private economy, where one isn't starting with a blank sheet of paper - a practical issue that he acknowledges but doesn't proceed to solve. And as I will mention below there are principles which most would argue as sensible - avoiding distortions, creating certainty so individuals and business can plan, and maintaining civil liberties - which are entirely absent and would significantly change his policy prescriptions. Despite the title, the more stimulating parts of the book are about monetary policy, which to be fair Murphy regards, in a country with its own sovereign currency, as inextricably linked with fiscal policy and hence taxation. As with many similar polemic books, the author has a habit of announcing his "discovery" of things that are hardly a secret, for example, that banks create money by making loans. The Bank of England apparently "had to admit this in 2014" only after reading Murphy's blog - he's so proud of this he repeats it three times. In reality, Charles Goodhart, a founding member of the post-independence Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank was writing about this in 1984 ("Monetary Theory and Practice"). More contentiously he seems to regard Government debt as a free money making machine. "To regard Government debt as some sort of burden on future generations is absurd" we are told - and justifies this by pointing out that much Government debt is held by pension funds. Those would, of course, be the same pension funds whose main purpose is to transfer wealth from future generations to pensioners by owning claims on assets. Instead he argues strongly that governments could, in theory, not tax at all and simply print money. But then oddly - and this is where despite claiming to be broadly neutral on a left-right spectrum - he then takes an odd lurch. Far from eliminating distortions "the tax system is designed to have an economic impact and so must be big enough to deliver it." - the joy of tax indeed. He quite rightly argues for the need for fiscal stimulus in a balance sheet recession (see Richard Koo and his argument that the "government as borrower of last resort") and I have sympathy with his view that using QE to fund infrastructure spending and targeted fiscal boosts (tax cuts for those most likely to spend it) would be a sensible policy to boost demand, if conventional and unconventional monetary tools fail. But crucially this needs to be a temporary not a permanent feature One of his key arguments is that "all the money we ever need to make things happen can be created out of thin air". The threat of thereby debasing currency - either by domestic inflation or by depreciation - seems not to concern him. Inflation is dismissed as a relic of the past which "isn't prevalent in modern economies" - but of course that is in part because modern economies are run with independent central banks specifically tasked with keeping inflation under control, whereas past inflation was in the era where Governments printed money to fund deficits. And devaluation - a loss of worldwide purchasing power - merits nary a mention. Murphy would counter that QE hasn't had the same effect but this was a temporary policy, introduced at the height of a global financial crisis, and implemented by an independent central Bank whose very mandate gives them a low - but non-zero - inflation target. A permanent tool in the hands of politicians is likely to have a rather different impact. He does effectively dismiss the libertarian view of tax stating correctly that tax revenue "does not become the property of some alien body. It is the property of a government in which we have a stake, and in which we participate." However this libertarian view is much more prevalent in the US than UK. More pertinently for the domestic situation, Murphy goes on to argue that "every time a politician says they are spending taxpayers' money they are making another statement that is simply untrue. Tax is not taxpayers' money. It is the government's money" - technically true but his own grammar defeats his logic. Tax revenue is, he is right, the money of taxpayers plural (not the money of the individual taxpayers) given his own logic that taxation is linked with representation, and the "spending taxpayers' money" mantra is quite right to suggest that those entrusted with the funds should spend them prudently and efficiently. There is no joy in tax for taxes sake for most people, other than Mr Murphy it seems. The distorting effect of taxes are actually in his view a good thing, as stated above, as is constant tinkering with the system "having levers to pull is vital." rather than the certainty and stability which most would regard as sensible features of a well designed system. Indeed tax should in his world view be used it seems mainly to tax "harmful" things out of existence - to the author these include landlords (not needed - state can print fee money to build as many houses as needed), banks and the financial sector generally, large private limited companies as well as the necessity for anyone to actually work (no need given the Government can hand out free money). Practicality - in particular the "I wouldn't start from here" point - seems to also pass him by in his overly simplistic approach. Advocating abolish national insurance is hardly news: successive Treasury teams in the last 30 years have tried but failed to find a way of doing it without creating new distortions, a backlash from the losers (which can't always be the "rich" / "bankers", and "landlords") who end up needing to be compensated, and a hole in the Government finances (albeit Murphy doesn't seem concerned re the latter point). The last great theoretical attempt for a clean-sheet approach to changing UK tax was the Community Charge (aka poll tax), and we all know where that ended. Similarly civil liberties are for the birds - in his world we would have armies of tax inspectors in every town with full access to everyone's private bank accounts - rather vital since his big idea is a transaction tax any time money moves in or out of anyone's account. Wealth taxes and income taxes are the same thing he says - "the reality is that as far as anyone is concerned (and I stress anyone) £1 of accumulated wealth is identical in economic value to £1 from any other source." But then he explains this using realised capital gains (my emphasis) versus inccome. Fair enough. but there is a massive difference to anyone (and now I stress anyone) in £1 of cash income, and £1 of extra paper wealth apparently accumulated by Zoopla revaluing your property. And yet he uses his argument to support wealth taxes based on Zoopla like data. He is on stronger grounds in arguing for realised capital gains, even on residences, to be taxed as income. But he discusses inflation indexation of capital gains and admits there were reasons for having it, otherwise "people would be taxed not on their wealth but on the falling value of their money" but as apparently inflation has been abolished he argues this is no longer needed. Overall Murphy concludes correctly that tax is integral to the contract between a government and the people "that tax must reflect the values and priorities of the people. If it does people will willingly pay it and return the government that charges it to power.". The results of the 2015 General Election and the current polls (November 2015) are rather inconvenient then for his own policy prescriptions. ...more |
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not set
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Nov 26, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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49
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| 0140123083
| 9780140123081
| 0140123083
| 4.02
| 32,644
| May 30, 1991
| 1992
|
liked it
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"As soon as you accepted that the man's breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than of his own innate weakness, then invariably the
"As soon as you accepted that the man's breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than of his own innate weakness, then invariably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual's symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter of constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible." Regeneration is based on the real-life story from 1917 of the psychologist W.H.R. Rivers treating British first world-war army officers for shell shock at the Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, among them the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated war hero, but who has written a letter renouncing the war, believing it to be unnecessarily prolonged and is being treated as suffering from psychosis rather than a conscientious objector. While Rivers succeeds in getting Sassoon to return to the war (no spoiler alert needed - this is a matter of historical record) he doesn't change his views of the futility of the War and indeed, as the opening quote suggests, if anything it is Rivers' own views that come under pressure. He was in any case not unaware of the irony of his work - his goal essentially being to render the victims of shell-shock fit for battle again: "Normally a cure implies that patient will no longer engage in behaviour that is clearly self-destructive. But in present circumstances, recovery meant the resumption of activities that were not merely self-destructive but suicidal." The horrors of the trench warfare of World War I are a powerful but not usual subject for fiction. Barker's novel distinguishes itself first for focusing on the effect on officers rather than troops. The working class characters that do appear are the least convincing in the book (too much of a "cor blimey guvnor" vibe for my taste) and Rivers himself has an attitude rooted in the class system. He tells a patient that officers unlike private soldiers rarely suffer from mutism: "What you get in officers is stammering. And it's not just mutism. All the physical symptoms: paralysis, blindness, deafness. They're all common in private soldiers and rate in officers. It's almost as if ... the labouring classes illness has to be physical. They can't take their condition seriously unless there's a physical symptom. And there are other differences as well. Officers' dreams tend to be more elaborate."' But the key distinguishing feature of the novel is that it is largely focused on the psychological rather than physical effects of the conflict. Much of the novel consists of Rivers own reflections and consultations with his patients, and have at times an air of being summarised versions of his real-life Lancet paper and subsequent book, rather than really coming to life. For example, on discovering that men who manned observation balloons had the highest breakdown rate of any service: "This reinforced Rivers view that it was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. That would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neuroses and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stess in active and constructive ways." People may record their thoughts in scientific papers in that fashion, but they don't think in their heads like that. Barker also seems to feel it necessary to obey the genre rules of historical fiction - not depart from the facts and get in all the source material - which can give the book a curiously forced feeling at times. There is a whole scene where Sassoon works with the poet Wilfred Owen on one of his poems, entirely based on actual handwritten amendments found in Owen's papers. And as Barker has largely learned of Rivers' methods and views from a paper published in the Lancet, then we have to see him write that paper. To me the novel really took off when Barker indulged her fictional impulses with a character entirely of her own invention, Billy Prior, the main subject of her follow up Eye in the Door where more subtleties of his character, such as his confused sexuality, merely hinted at here, emerge. Overall - certainly a powerful work, but to me there were two books here battling for control of the text - a non-fictional summary of Rivers work versus a fictional novel. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Nov 24, 2015
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Nov 20, 2015
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Paperback
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57
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| 1408808870
| 9781408808870
| 1408808870
| 2.83
| 15,884
| 2010
| Aug 02, 2010
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liked it
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The first of Howard Jacobson's novels that I read was Kalooki Nights (/review/show...), and after that I didn't plan to ever
The first of Howard Jacobson's novels that I read was Kalooki Nights (/review/show...), and after that I didn't plan to ever read another. The subject matter seemed far too narrow and self-obsessed, and the much praised comedy consisted of laboured puns and poor-taste jokes that Jacobson could only get away with by his own ethnicity (Q: What noise did the trains make going to Auschwitz. A jew, jew), with a plot largely contrived to set up these jokes. Then, as it was Booker shortlisted, I forced myself to read his 2014 J and was very pleasantly surprised. (/review/show...). So I decided to give his 2010 Booker winning Finkler Question a try. Unfortunately it is much closer to Kalooki Nights, but I read it with more sympathy to the author and hence appreciated it more. It is, unfortunately much easier to highlight what I didn't like and what it shares with Kalooki Nights. To quote James Wood in the New Yorker: () "It is always shouting, 'I am funny.' Jacobson has a weakness for breaking into one-line paragraphs, so as to nudge the punch line on us. The effect is bullying...Jacobson cannot take his foot off the exaggeration pedal..." Wood's most telling criticism is that he found himself scribbling "no he/she/they didn't" in the margins at frequent intervals - the point I made above about the plot existing mainly to set up the puns. My own example from the back-history in the early pages: the main character, Julian Treslove, gets a job in a "theatrical agency specialising in providing doubles of famous people" even though "he didn't look like anybody famous in particular, but looked like many famous people in general." Hardly plausible, but seemingly there simply to provide a context for Jacobson's, admittedly delicious, line that he "was in demand if not by virtue of verisimilitude, at least by virtue of versatility." The sole reason for the main character being even called Julian is to make plays on his name, e.g. "Jewels" and, crucially to the whole novel, "Ju" - because that is the novel's main plot, a Gentile who decides in middle age that perhaps he is really Jewish. Similarly his succession of girlfriends mentioned in the novel are called Joia, Julie, June, Joanna, Juno - the only one without a name like that being his first genuinely Jewish partner. Treslove's best friend, albeit also rival, is Sam (previously Samuel) Finkler and his name gives the book its title. "Before he met Finkler, Treslove had never met a Jew. Not knowingly at least..so that was that he called them privately, Finklers" As far as Treslove is concerned, it is Finklers that excite his obsessive and jealous curiousity. E.g. after a (frankly rather trite but to him) witty remark from his partner: "He couldn't work out how she had done it. Was it hyperbole or was in understatement. Was it self-mockery or mockery of him? He decided it was tone. Finklers did tone. As with music, they may not have invented it, but they had mastered its range. They revealed depths in it which the inventors of tone, like the great composers themselves - for neither Verdi nor Puccini was a Finkler, Treslove knew that - could never have dreamed were there. There were interpreters of genius. They showed hat could be done with sound," Finkler himself joins an anti-Zionist Jewish organisation called Ashamed Jews, and his voice in the novel provides some balance. However, it is clear where Jacobson's own views lie, as Finkler is a figure of fun (the group comes to be called of course, chortle chortle, Ash Jews for short) and Finkler comes to realise the error of his way as he sees anti-Zionism is separated only minutely from anti-Semitism. One gets the strong impression that for Jacobson anti-semitism is at least something he can understand and treat as a form of obsessive jealousy: what would really pain him is indifference. As one character says: “You could divide the world into those who wanted to kill Jews and those who wanted to be Jews.� Crucially however, Jacobson is well aware of what he is doing, and indeed has the characters point out the same traits in others. He has another character retort after a similar discussion: "You might be surprised to learn how few people see the archetypal Jew every time they see him. Or even know that he's a Jew. Or care." And on the constant punning, Treslove himself wonders: "'Is it funny for a Jew to write the word Jew? Is that what's funny?' 'Forget it,' Finkler said. 'You wouldn't understand.' 'Why wouldn't I understand? Non-Jews don't find it hilarious to see the word Non-Jew. We aren't amazed by the written fact of our identity.'" And on the plot that sets up the joke, one character tells a story of a having an affair with a holocaust denier and swapping sexual favours for millions of dead (you do that to me, and I'll concede another million), only for another to simply retort, a la James Wood, "no you didn't". Also, Wood is unfair in suggesting that Jacobson is permanently pressing the exaggeration pedal. As the novel progresses, the tone becomes more sombre and the topics more serious. As with J, the comedy does at times gets replaced with polemics, but Jacobson has some genuinely moving things to say about friendship, relationships and bereavement, as well as a reasonably balanced view on, what he would call, the Finkler Question even if it's clear where his own sympathies lie. A worthwhile if flawed read. ...more |
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not set
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Nov 17, 2015
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Nov 13, 2015
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Hardcover
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51
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| 0007320965
| 9780007320967
| 0007320965
| 3.59
| 7,501
| 1979
| Aug 20, 2009
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liked it
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I've previously read and very much admired Penelope Fitzgerald's novels The Blue Flower (/review/show...), The Gate of Angels
I've previously read and very much admired Penelope Fitzgerald's novels The Blue Flower (/review/show...), The Gate of Angels (/review/show...) and The Bookshop (/review/show...). But for all the critical attention, and award nominations, these received, it was Offshore that won her the Booker Prize in 1979. Offshore is set in the rather eccentric world of houseboats in Battersea Reach, and is, like The Bookshop, based on her own experience of doing so as a child. From page 1, she sketches the world and cast of characters in her signature, wonderfully compact, prose, for example Richard, who sees himself as the leader of the community and who addresses other residents by their boats' rather than their own names: "Richard was quite correct, as technically speaking they were all in harbour, in addressing them by the name of their craft ... Richard in his decent dark blue blazer dominated the meeting. And yet he by no means wanted this responsibility. Living on Battersea Reach, overlooked by some very good houses, and under the surveillance of the Port of London Authority, entailed, surely, a certain standard of conduct. Richard would be one of the last men on earth or water to want to impose it. Yet someone must. Duty is what no-one else will do at the moment. Fortunately he did not have to define duty. War service in the RNVR, and his whole temperament before and since, had done that for him." Fitzgerald uses the unusual background to explore some unconventional relationships. Those who live on the boats, on the water but permanently moored, all seem to have a curiously interim existence, particularly in their personal relationships: "Was there not, on the whole of Battersea Reach, a couple, married or unmarried, living together in the ordinary way?" As one character remarks to another, whose husband refuses to live with her and her children on the boat: "It's right for us to live where we do, between land and water. You, my dear, you're half in love with your husband, then there's Martha, who's half a child and half a girl, Richard who can't give up half being in the Navy, Willis who's half an artist and half a longshoreman, a cat who's half alive and half dead... He stopped before describing himself." The received critical verdict on Offshore is that it isn't Fitzgerald's strongest work - right winner of the Booker, wrong book (see also Ian McEwan, Howard Jacobson and others). And that corresponded with my view. Having set up her characters so well, the later story seemed rather underdeveloped. From a purely personal point of view, the setting was also much less relevant to my personal experience and interest than those of eccentric Cambridge colleges and bookshops in coastal Suffolk, and my appreciation of the book suffered as a result. Penelope Fitzgerald is always worth reading but this is one to get round to only once one has tackled the rest of her backlist. Next for me is The Beginning of Spring. ...more |
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Nov 18, 2015
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Nov 13, 2015
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Paperback
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18
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| 0571323766
| 9780571323760
| 0571323766
| 3.82
| 47,399
| Sep 17, 2015
| Sep 17, 2015
|
really liked it
|
"Ill people, in their last day on earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying 'OH NO YOU DON'T COCK-CHEEK'. She was not busy dying,
"Ill people, in their last day on earth, do not leave notes stuck to bottles of red wine saying 'OH NO YOU DON'T COCK-CHEEK'. She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone." Grief Is the Things with Feathers is about two young children and their father, a Ted Hughes scholar writing a book about Hughes's Crow poems, mourning their mother, who has died suddenly and unexpectedly. Book 5 out of 6 from the Goldsmiths shortlist and the most striking: like nothing else I've read. Albeit not my personal favourite as I had two issues, which I suspect many readers would not share. First and to quote one of the children "here's a little secret. I've never even read [Crow]. I don't like [Ted] Hughes and I don't like poetry.". In my case the association of Ted Hughes's name with Crows rang vague bells, but that was it. Hence I suspect a key part of the novel passed me by. Secondly, the technical merit of Porter's writing is so striking, and parts are so cynically humorous, that it had the unintended effect for me of significantly limiting the impact of the highly emotive topic matter. In just 114 generously spaced pages, Porter tells the story (if that is the right word) in three alternating voices, Dad, Boys (who speak as one interchangable voice - "I'm either brother") and Crow, and in many forms - narrative, poems, prose poems, essay, fables, even an English comprehension test with questions ("does the rural setting of the story change the way you engage with the characters?"). The cynical humour comes through immediately, as the Dad observes the reaction of friends and family to the tragedy: "I was becoming an expert on the behaviour of orbiting grievers. Being at the epicentre grants a curiously anthropological awareness of everybody else; the overwhelmeds, the affectedly lackadaisacals, the nothing so fars, the overstayers, the new best friends of hers, of mine, of the boys. The people I have no f idea who they were. I felt like Earth in that extraordinary picture of the planet surrounded by a thick belt of space junk. It would be years before the knotted-string dream of other people's performances of woe for my dead wife would thin enough for me to see any black space again, and of course - needless to say - thoughts of this kind made me feel guilty. But, I thought, in support of myself, everything has changed and she is gone and I can think what I like. She would approve, because we were always over analytical, cynical, probably disloyal. puzzled. Dinner party post-mortem bitches with kind intentions. Hypocrites, friends." The Boys are if anything disconcerted by the lack of drama (that part taken from Porter's own memory of when his father died): "Where are the fire engines? Where is the noise and clamour of an event like this? Where are the strangers going out of their way to help, screaming, flinging bits of emergency glow-in-the-dark equipment at us to try and settle and save us? There should be men in helmets speaking a new and dramatic language of crisis? There were no crowds and no uniformed strangers and there was no new language of crisis. We stayed in our PJs and people visited and gave us stuff." And of course the most memorable of these voices is Crow - a literal, physical crow who, at least in their minds, enters their lives to help them cope: "Head down, tot-along, looking. Head down, hop-down, totter. Look up. 'LOUD, HARD AND INDIGNANT KRAAH NOTES' (Collins Guide to Birds, p45). Head down, bottle top, potter. Head down, mop-a-lot, hopper. He could learn a lot from me, That's why I'm here." His voice varies the most, since in reality he is whoever they need him to be: "...Let me buck flap snutch clat trap one tapa two, motherless children in my trap, in my apse, in separate stocks for boiling.. (I do this, perform some unbound crow stufff, for him. I think he's a little bit Stonehenge shamanic, hearing the bird spirit, Fine by me, whatever gets him through.)" Crow himself summarises his role in their grieving process and in the novel: "In other versions I am a doctor and a ghost. Perfect devices: doctors, ghosts, crows. We can do things other characters can't, like eat sorrow, un-birth secrets and have theatrical battles with language and God. I was friend, excuse, deus ex machina, joke, symptom, figment, spectre, crutch, toy, phantom, gag, analyst and babysitter.... Yes, I do eat baby rabbits, plunder nests, swallow filth, cheat death, mock the starving homeless, misdirect, misinform. Oi, stab it! A bloody load of time wasted. But I care, deeply. I find humans dull except in grief. There are very few in health, disaster, famine, atrocity, splendour or normality that interest me (interest ME!) but the motherless children do. Motherless children are pure crow. For a sentimental bird it is ripe, rich and delicious to raid such a nest." And, over time, they do indeed get to the stage where Crow is no longer needed, although certainly not to "move on" as the Dad insists: "Moving on, as a concept, was mooted, a year or two after, by friendly men on behalf of their well intention wives. Oh, I said, we move. WE F* HURTLE THROUGH SPACE LIKE THREE MAGNIFICENT BRAKE-FAILED BANGERS, thank you, Geoffrey and send my love to Jean. Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush." Overall - an extraordinary debut. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 05, 2015
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Oct 31, 2015
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Hardcover
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56
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| 1782116133
| 9781782116134
| 1782116133
| 3.48
| 3,583
| Oct 29, 2015
| Oct 29, 2015
|
liked it
|
The final book I've read from the Goldsmiths 2015 shortlist, but, relatively to a strong list, one of the weaker in my view, albeit still a worthwhile
The final book I've read from the Goldsmiths 2015 shortlist, but, relatively to a strong list, one of the weaker in my view, albeit still a worthwhile read. And not as strong as Barry's previous Impac-winning City of Bohane (/review/show...). Ultimately this novel suffers from two issues: firstly it requires an interest in John Lennon to really appreciate it, and I don't think it does enough to create that interest for anyone who doesn't have it. secondly, the authorial interjection that occurs part way through, see below, seems artificial. Beatlebone has its origins in a true story. In 1967 John Lennon bought an island in Clew Bay off the west coast of Ireland, originally with grand designs of building a house there, but he eventually handed over the island to a community of hippies, who themselves abandoned it. Beatlebone imagines "John" (his surname is never mentioned), returning incognito (although the press soon get wind) to the area in 1978, hoping to visit the island and try out primal scream therapy. He will spend three days alone on the island. That is all he asks. That he might scream his f..... lungs out and scream the days into nights and scream to the stars by night - if stars there are and the stars come through. What follows is a slightly surreal, supernatural and mildly Kafkesque story as the locals, and in particular the memorable Cornelius, a local fixer, seem to take him on endless diversions and misadventures on the way to the island. And in the meantime we get John's own thoughts, mostly in dialogue with Cornelius, on his Liverpool origins and on artistic creativity. The novel is largely told in minimally punctuated and sardonic dialogue, for example when John first reaches a hotel in the area: A hatchet face crone appears on the tip of her witches snout. Looks him and and down. Sour as the other Monday's milk. Double checks his ankles to see if he's got a suitcase hid down there. Well? she says. It's about a room, love She throws an eye up at the clock. This is a foxy hour to be landing into a hotel, she says. And in denim, he says. The reception's air is old and heavy, as in a sick room's, and the clock swings through its gloomy moments. Do you have a reservation? she says. I have severe ones, he says, but I do need a room." Or, towards the end of the novel, in conversation with Cornelius: "The black swarm of the sea moves its lights like a cocaine palace. I beg your pardon, John? It's a lyric, Cornelius. Or at least a note towards one. I'm thinking it all through. I have you now. I just let the words come out, really, in a sort of ... blaaah. You know without thinking? It's just a kind of ... bleuurrgh. Without thinking. To get the sub-concious stuff? And then I see if I can get a shape on them. Is that how it works? Sometimes. But the imagination is a very weak little bird. It flounders, Cornelius, and it flaps around a bit. I'd believe it, John. Cocaine I never took. I'm inclined to think that's a very good idea. Though I was addicted to cough bottles at one time. His trip culminated not so much on the island, which is something of a disappointment, but with a spiritual experience in a cave, which inspires him to imagine a new album, the eponymous beatlebone: It will contain nine f... songs, and it will f... cohere, and it will be the greatest f.... thing he will ever f... do. Now in the cave he has all of its words and all of its noise and all of its squall. He sees the broad sweep - he sees the tiny detail. This is the one that will settle every score. This is pure expression of scorched ego and burning soul. The title comes through with first light. He makes carefully with a finger the letters of the word in the white sand b e a t l e b o n e. And the eight part of the novel - there are 9 in all, a number with which the real-life Lennon was obsessed - tells of his rather unsuccessful attempt to record this (fictitious) lost album: CHARLIE:[the sound engineer] It's going to be a challenging piece of work. JOHN: They are going to do me up like a f* kipper, Charlie. CHARLIE: Well there are no songs. As such. I mean song-type songs. Is the thing of it, John. JOHN: You thing this is news to me, Mr Haines. CHARLIE: I'm not saying it necessarily needs song-type songs. As such. JOHN: There are nine f* pieces. CHARLIE: But do they flow? As such? JOHN: Flow, Charlie. What do you think this is? F* Supertramp. To add to the rather non-standard nature of the novel, three quarters of the way through the book there is a 35-page authorial interruption to the story. The narrator - the author or a fictional version of Barry - explains that much of John's experiences are based on his own when he researched the book. "The idea was that I would get to the island and I would Scream...I imagined that this was going to be an odd, meditative interlude in my life - three days of utter inwardness; an exploration of inner space; a seablown breeze to clear all the webs away - and I would return to report my findings in a mature, honed, prose, as clear as class: this from a man who had never knowingly underfed an adjective." Except in practice, Barry found the experience (or at least in his account in the novel) more disturbing that he expected, complete with the same visions and cave experience he attributes to John in the novel. This "how I came to write the novel" section is interesting, but I couldn't help feel that its insertion directly into the novel, temporarily interrupting but not diverting the story, felt artificial versus simply including it as a postscript. Overall, interesting and worth its place on the Goldsmiths shortlist given the brief of the prize, but there are stronger novels on the list. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 08, 2015
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Oct 31, 2015
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Hardcover
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6
| 
| 1908717866
| 9781908717863
| 1908717866
| 4.00
| 3,438
| Apr 2014
| Jan 01, 2014
|
really liked it
|
"when I woc in the mergen all was blaec through the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time. a great wind had cum in the night and
"when I woc in the mergen all was blaec through the night had gan and all wolde be blaec after and for all time. a great wind had cum in the night and all was blown then and broc. none had thought a wind lic this colde cum for all was blithe lifan as they always had and who will hiere the gleoman when the tales he tells is blaec who locs at the heofan if it bring him regn who locs in the mere when there seems no end to its deopness" Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake, published in 2014, was longlisted for the Booker and was part of a very strong shortlist for the, in my view more discerning, Goldsmiths Prize. It won the Gordon Burn prize for "novels which dare to enter history and interrogate the past...literature which challenges perceived notions of genre and makes us think again about just what it is that we are reading" - which is a perfect description of the novel. And also the Bookseller Book of the Year, up against one of the most varied lists I've seen for a book prize e.g. David Walliams's Awful Auntie, H is for Hawk, Piketty's Capital and the vlogger Zoe Gugg's Girl Online. The Wake tells the story of the Anglo-Saxon "resistance" in the wake of 1066 and the Norman conquest. And most distinctly does so in a language that attempts to replicate the Old English of the time - the language of England that pre-dated the arrival of Norman French. Although it is not written in Old English ("that would be unreadable to anyone except scholars") but rather a pseudo-language of Kingsnorth's own invention. The effect is striking, authentic, atmospheric, powerful, odd but comprehensible: "aefry ember of hope gan lic the embers of a fyr brocen in the daegs beginnan brocen by men other than us" It forced me to read more carefully as I has to sound out the words, at least in my head, in a way that I wouldn't normally do when reading. Indeed a quick trial showed that my 8 year old daughter actually found the book easier than I did, since reading words phonetically was more natural to her. The task certainly gets easier after a few pages as one gets into the swing; I expected it might at the same time get tiresome after 300+ pages, but it didn't. To give one example, a riddle in Kingsworth's version of Old English: "my stem is hard he saes in a bed it is standan proud i is haeric under neath sum girl she tacs me in her hand she holds me hard she runs her hwit hand along my hard stem and she peels me and she tacs my heafod in her mouth and lo I will mac that girls eages water" What am I? Answer - "a leac" (onion). The novel is narrated by buccmaster of holland "A socman of the blaec fenns a free man of the eald danelaugh" (socman being a free tenant farmer under the Danelaw in Eastern England) and, unusually in Christian 11th century England, an adherent of the "eald gods of angland" (Wodan, Frigg, Erce) and no friend of Christian priests "before the crist cum our folcs gods was of anglisc wind and water now this ingenga god from ofer the sea this god he tacs from us what we is." After buccmaster's ham is razed by the French invaders, as punishment for refusing to pay them the demanded gold, he sets out to become one of the green men, a guerilla resistance movement against the Normans. But he doesn't join the established risings of Eadric, Hereward or the sons of Harald in the North (all real historical figures featured in the novel) but instead takes control of his own small band of motley followers. Kingsnorth clearly has something of a political axe to grind both historically and in the present day. In an afterword he describes the Norman occupation as "probably the most catastrophic single event in this nation's history" and blames the "Norman Yoke" (which he admits most modern historians sniff at) for many of today's modern ills 1050 years later, such as uneven land distribution ("this is all the more regrettable as the effects of Guillaime's invasion are still with us"). In his non-fiction work, Real England Kingsnorth railed against "a new England: a smoke-free, health-conscious, well-dressed designer nation whose values are those of its new ruling class, the city bourgeoisie. The country is being remodelled and made safe for urban 4x4 drivers, gastropub diners, the owners of investment properties and the wearers of clean wellies". As someone who ticks most of those boxes - except the well-dressed - I'd would call that progress, but for Kingsnorth this is the loss of the "Real England" and, in a link to The Wake, his greatest ire is reserved for the replacement of traditional smoke-filled inns ("the English pub - perhaps the best marker of our national character - English ale from the Saxon ealu") by family-friendly smoke-free gastropubs (again - I'd regard that as a great achievement of modern society). And he puts similar sentiments into the mouth of the narrator, buccmaster. He hits out at the confiscation of land by the Normans ("as wulmaer theyn was cwelled feohtan under the flag of harald godweison who was thief of the corona of angland his land will be gifen to geeyome cing and with them all lands in his thegnage"), the likely introduction of French words and names into the English language, castle-building, foreigners generally and, as above and despite the fact it predates the French arrival, Christianity. However, to be fair to KIngsnorth, buccmaster is no hero, except possibly in his own distorted view. Although he claims to have seen and told others what was happening ("why does they not lysten why does they not see"), he refuses to go to fight for harald at Stamford Bridge and then Battle and tries to stop his sons doing so. After the Conquest he believes himself to be chosen for greatness by the old Gods and great men of England ("i specs for the wilde for the eald gods under the blaec waters in the drencced treows. i is the lands law over men i is eorth not heofon leaf of treow not leaf of boc. i is raedwald i is beowulf i is harald cyng last of the anglisc i sceal be"). But even when he forms his mini-resistance movement he spends much of the time hiding in the woods and the fens. Indeed his delusions extend to an ongoing dialogue, in his mind, with the historical-mythical Weland Smith, who acts as a form of ongoing challenge to him (e.g. asking why he is "weac like a wifman in thy warm hus eatan and sleapan while angland beorns"). And in a disturbing end to the novel, we see both the truth of buccmaster's family history and his real attitude to his small band of followers: "and did they thinc i wolde stand did they thinc i wolde stand and die with them these esols these cwellers of angland these wifmen who has not been triewe to me". buccmaster is exposed him for what he is, a self-obsessed, delusional, character. And this in turn at least makes one question, if not ultimately reject, his views - a brave authorial choice. Highly recommended. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 12, 2015
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Oct 29, 2015
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Hardcover
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81
| 
| 0385540353
| 9780385540353
| 0385540353
| 3.40
| 73,485
| Sep 2015
| Sep 29, 2015
|
it was ok
|
Oh dear. Another dystopian novel from Margaret Atwood, but with nothing like the literary merit of the Handmaid's Tail, Blind Assassin or Oryx & Crake. Oh dear. Another dystopian novel from Margaret Atwood, but with nothing like the literary merit of the Handmaid's Tail, Blind Assassin or Oryx & Crake. It's telling that The Heart Goes Last started as a serial story on the website Byliner. This doesn't so much feel like it was conceived as a novel, but rather as a short story later padded out to one. Society has, but for the super-rich, largely broken down post a major collapse of the financial system "40 percent of the population in this region is jobless, with 50 percent of those being under twenty-five (*). That's a recipe for systems breakdown, right there: for anarchy, for chaos, for the senseless destruction of property, for so-called revolution, which means looting and gang rule and warlords and mass rape, and the terrorisation of the weak and helpless." (* the mathematician in me can't help but observe that without knowing what proportion of the population is under 25, this doesn't really tell us much about relative youth unemployment rates) "At first the solution was to build more prisons and cram more people into them" but that only created more problems. The new solution - the premise of the novel - makes no sense whatsoever. Realising that "if prisons were scaled out and handled rationally, they could be win-win viable economic units" the authorities hit on the idea of a community where "if every citizen were either a guard or a prisoner, the result would be full employment...the fair thing to do would be for everyone to take turns, one month in, one month out." It's the Keynesian digging a hole in the ground, or burying banknotes in coalmines, from his General Theory taken to a rather silly conclusion. With a book based on an implausible premise, the novel then runs out of any real ideas to take it forward, and substitutes a rather farcical thriller for any meaningful social commentary. For example, a key plot development revolves around a character smuggled out of the prison/community disguised as an animatronic Elvis sex doll. And that example brings out a key feature of the novel. Atwood is trying to be humorous rather than hard-hitting. Unfortunately much of the humour revolves around some rather primitive, and frankly disturbing, attitudes to sex. To put it bluntly, all of the male characters seem to be regard violence and physical domination as an integral part, and all the female characters seem to most agree. As one says of the female models of the animatronic "prostibots": "But they can't feel pain say the detractors, they're working on that feature, say the boosters. Anyway, they'll never say no. Or they'll say no only if you want them to." This could be excused as perhaps a timely commentary on gamer culture, given the internet origins of the novel - except there is no-one, even the female characters, to present an alternative view. There is some justice of sorts in the shape of injuries suffered by a particularly nasty character from an over-tuned prostibot (use your imagination) but this is just there for a cheap laugh. And a half-hearted attempt to add some alternative "you do have a choice" perspective for women in the closing chapter, but this feels like it was bolted on at the end, perhaps at an editor or publishers request. Overall - very disappointing from a previously worthy author. I'll mentally chalk this one down an an experiment in internet serialisation gone wrong, rather than a real novel, and not write off Atwood entirely but her next novel is going to have to go a long way to redeem this one. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Oct 30, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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Hardcover
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44
| 
| 0224090577
| 9780224090575
| 0224090577
| 3.84
| 4,826
| Mar 31, 2011
| May 09, 2011
|
liked it
|
City of Bohane, Kevin Barry's debut novel, won the prestigious international Impac prize in 2013, one of the my favourite literary prizes as one of th
City of Bohane, Kevin Barry's debut novel, won the prestigious international Impac prize in 2013, one of the my favourite literary prizes as one of the few that treats translated fiction on a par with English language originals (/review/list...). And his 2nd novel, Beatlebone has been shortlisted for the equally excellent Goldsmiths Prize. So I came to this book with high expectations, albeit tempered by the detail of the Impac nomination which states that the novel "blends influences from film and the graphic novel, from Trojan beats and calypso rhythms, from Celtic myth and legend, from fado and the sagas". Literary fiction is notably absent from the list, and indeed Barry has said "realist literary fiction is, of course, the hoariest (and dullest) of all the genres". The story is set in the "Gothical West of Ireland" in the "once great and cosmopolitan" City of Bohane and the fueds between and within the various street-gangs that dominate the seedier parts of town ("its grogshops, its noodle joints, its tickle-foot parlours. Its dank shebeens and fetsih studios. Its shooting galleries, hoor stables, bookmakers. All crowded in on each other in the lean-to streets. The tottering old chimneys were stacked in great deranged happiness against the morning sky"). We are forty years in the future (2053-4), after a lost-time ("they wished that the lost-time in Bohane might, as the years passed, fade into less painful memory"). Beyond the City of Bohane lies the Nations Beyond, spoke of by the City's inhabitants as some mythical place but actually with a rather prosaic relationship with the City's Authority - a key plot element concerns ensuring the City's reputation isn't too sullied by the unfolding events as to lose the funding for a new tram line. The author has described the novel as "a weird retro-fitted future-Western, with lots of gratuitous swearing, hideous violence, perverse sex and powerful opiates." While that makes the novel sound more potentially shocking than it really is, the description is a good one. In particular this is an oddly technology-free future - there are no cars only trams and horses, no mobile phones or computers, the gangsters use knifes not guns. Barry has a Joycean love of the auditory power of language - with prose that almost demands to be read out loud. The most memorable parts of the novel are the highly visual descriptions of the characters and the outlandish costumes that they wear (and which they change on a daily basis). E.g. Logan Hartnett (aka the Long Fella), who effectively runs Bohane at present. "All sorts of quarehawks lingered Trace-deep in the small hours. They looked down as he passed, they examined their toes and their sacks of tawny wine - you wouldn't make eye contact with the Long Fella if you could help it. Strange, but we had a fear of him and a pride in him, both. He had a fine hold of himself, as we say in Bohane. He was graceful and erect and he looked neither left nor right but straight out ahead always, with the shoulders thrown back, like a general. He walked the Arab tangle of alleyways and wynds that make up the Trace and there was the slap, the lift, the slap, the lift of Portuguese leather on the backstreet stones. Yes and Logan was in his element as he made progress through the labyrinth. He feared not the shadows, he knew the fibres of the place, he knew every last twist and lilt of it." Most memorable dressed is Ol Boy Mannion "Ol Boy wore: High-top boots expensively clicker'd with gold taps, a pair of hip-hugging jodphur-style pants in a faded mauve tone, an amount of gold chains, a heavy mink coat to keep out the worst of the headwind's assaults and a goatskin beanie hat see pavee-style on the crown of his head. Truth of it - this was as suave an old dude as you'd come across in the whole of Bohane creation." Another two characters. One wore: "Silver high-top boots, drainpipe strides in a natty-boy mottle, a low-slung dirk belt and a three-quarter jacket of saffron-dyed sheepskin. He was tall and straggly as an invasive weed. He was astonishingly sentimental, and as violent again. His belligerent green eyes were strange flowers indeed. He was seventeen years of age and he read magical significance into occurrences of the number nine. He had ambition deep inside but could hardly even name it. His true love: an unpredictable Alsatian bitch name of Angelina. Wolfie wore; Black patent high-tops, tight bleached denims with a matcher of a waistcoat, a high dirk belt, and a navy Crombie with a black velvet collar. Wolfie was low-sized, compact, ginger, and he thrummed with dense energies. He had a blackbird's poppy eyed stare, thyroidal, and if his brow was no more than an inch deep, it was packed with an alley rat's cunning. He was seventeen, also, and betrayed, sometimes, by odd sentiments under moonlight. He wanted to own entirely the City of Bohane. His all-new, all-true love: Miss Jenni Ching of the Hartnett Fancy and the Oh Pee Ching Oh-Kay Koffee Shoppe." Jennis is perhaps the most memorable character, a teenage girl and emerging rival for "the Long Fella": "Miss Jenni Ching, boss-lady of the Ho Pee ever since her black-mooded momma had tossed her small demented bones into the Bohane river (just a quick headlong dash from the caff), on account of dog-fight debts, some said, or because of a persistent strain of Ching family madness, according to others, and Jenni regarded the fatty, creamy soup her uncle offered with an as-if glare � on my hips? � and she pushed it aside. She was in a white leather jumpsuit up top of hoss-polis zippered boots, with her fine hair let down, and her hair was streaked and worn this season in a blunt-cut fringe that she blew aside with regular, rhythmic spouts of tabsmoke." The dialogue is in stylised slang - e.g. Jenni's first words in the novel to Logan. "Cusacks gonna sulk up a welt o'vengeance by 'n' by and if yer askin' me, like? A rake o' them tossers bullin' down off the Rises is the las' thing Smoketown need." The story itself rather takes a back-seat to all of this, but the various power struggles are interesting enough to maintain the reader's interest, if nothing very new. And that highlights my issue. The Problem is: the so-what. I was expecting some sort of explanation for how Bohane evolved to this state, or more on how and why it operates now and the wider world, perhaps as a commentary on Irish history, or some more literary allusions, or something. Ultimately this is a steam-punk graphic novel, but one where the pictures are painted in words. That's impressive, but it isn't enough, particularly not to win such a major prize. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 29, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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Paperback
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46
| 
| 1888451823
| 9781888451825
| 1888451823
| 3.73
| 2,096
| Sep 01, 2005
| Jan 01, 2005
|
liked it
|
"He called himself Apostle York. And nothing that had yet invaded Gibbeah - not redifusion radio, Bazooka Joe chewing gum, or condoms - moved with his
"He called himself Apostle York. And nothing that had yet invaded Gibbeah - not redifusion radio, Bazooka Joe chewing gum, or condoms - moved with his seismic force. He was a whirlwind. He was a centre. Fluttery voices made mention of the Apostle's looks, so like Tyrone Power in the Mask of Zorro that was still shown at the Majestic, but with a trimmed beard, wet eyes and unruly black hair, like a coolie. God has sent him to Gibbeah. Jesus looked just like him. This meant he had power to deal with Pastor Bligh as brashly as the Lord dealt with the money changers in the Temple." John Crow's Devil was Marlon James's debut novel, published in the US in 2005 but only in Britain in 2015 following his shortlisting, and subsequent victory, in the Man Booker Prize. He dedicated it to "Kaylie Jones, my editor, mentor, and friend, who saved this novel in a way that I will reveal one day" - and indeed following his Booker success he revealed that he had completely deleted all copies of the novel from his hard drive following multiple rejections, but, encouraged by Jones who liked what she heard and after much searching, salvaged a copy from "an old laptop in an Outlook Express outbox." While not as polished as the excellent History of Seven Killings, it was certainly worth retrieving. This novel tells the fictitious story of the town of Gibbeah. Gibbeah's Church had been led, badly, by the alcoholic Pastor Bligh (nicknamed the Rum Preacher - albeit in my Norfolk dialect that has a nicer double meaning that it does in Jamaican). But that ends following the arrival of a mysterious prophet, the charismatic (in both secular and religious senses of the word) Apostle York, who first act is to bodily eject the Pastor from the Church. At first the Pastor takes solace in drink: "Let the Rum Preacher testify to this. He was far more comfortable at the bar than at the altar. As head of the church he could never escape the collective weight of judgement. But that cup had passed, and sliding toward him was another, wet, golden and tinkling with ice. What lay beyond shame, freedom? He was seven sips from not giving a damn, fifteen from not remembering who he was and twenty from pissing on himself." And the Apostle seems a relatively conventional church leader, trying to purify an impure town. Gibbeah itself has shades of Sodom and Gommorah, with alcohol dominant and every flavour of sexual practice, such as "the inseparable Scottforth twins who no longer lived in the village had separated when both tried to marry the same goat." But the Apostle's arrival eventually forces an awakening in the Pastor and a fierce battle takes place between the two men. On one level the conflict is for personal influence, between an alcoholic and a syphilitic madman, and largely physical. But on another it is very spiritual. Although ostensibly set in the 1950s, this is a very biblical world, where demons, curses and miracles are common place, indeed the novel has a touch of magic realism. The Apostle bases his teaching firmly on the scriptures, but used rather selectively and creatively. He argues that saved Christians are without sin and hence automatically pass Jesus's test of being able to cast the first stone at sinners. And in one amusing passage uses 2 Corinthians (5:7 although he doesn't name the verse) to justify forgiving the Pastor and inviting him back into the fold, but when this doesn't work out, immediately quotes 1 Corinthians (5:13) to justify expelling him permanently. And his true view on scripture is captured in a memorable exchange with the Pastor. He dabbles in apocrypha as the source of his powers: "The Bible is just a book, Bligh. An incomplete, inconclusive book. Your church calls itself the Church of St Thomas, and yet your same church forbids the Gospel of St Thomas...I've read books of Solomon that you've never heard of...That lying Bible would tell you that Solomon got stupid when he strayed; no, he got even more wise. That's when he started making sense. He could command angels and demons and gain wisdom that God had been fearing from man ever since Eve bit the apple. Knowledge, Bligh. That's how you become God. Now angels and demons do my will too." As the novel progresses, the spiritual battle heightens, and the Apostle leads the townspeople to cult-like excesses of violence e.g. they literally cast stones. The happenings in Guyana at Jonestown inevitably spring to mind, although he doesn't go as far as ordering mass suicide, but the Apostle's has extends little mercy to those he sees as having gone astray: "Those who had rebelled against the church by pitching tent with Pastor Bligh repented of their sin. They also repented of witchcraft, Devilry, horoscope, bearing false witness, chocolate, perversion, fornication, bestiality, incest, dancing, music listening, wearing short dresses, and washing one's pokie or cocky too long in the bathtub - anything to make the whipping shorter. The Apostle was firm: Evil had to be driven out." But we also see the personal demons both men are battling, and in particular discover the Apostle's real motivation - he is reeking delayed vengeance for past ills suffered on Gibbeah, the Church and even God himself. James's narrative voice, as so memorably deployed in Seven Killings, is in its development stages here. We have his preferred "Greek chorus" of off-stage narrators to drive the plot forward but this alternates rather randomly between a relatively conventional omniscient and detached observer, and the thoughts of an unnamed (and unspecific) local, rendered in patois: "It was soon coming Easter. The Apostle tell we to chop down plenty coconut leaf, cause the next Sunday is Palm Sunday. Him goin make the pickneys put on show right in church!" Overall - not to the standard of A Brief History of Seven Killings but certainly worthwhile. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 03, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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Paperback
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17
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| 1846558395
| 9781846558399
| 1846558395
| 3.56
| 289
| Mar 19, 2015
| Mar 19, 2015
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really liked it
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Book 4 from the Goldsmiths shortlist, and my favourite so far. A book that revealed more subtlety as it progressed. The idea of a novel re-imagining th Book 4 from the Goldsmiths shortlist, and my favourite so far. A book that revealed more subtlety as it progressed. The idea of a novel re-imagining the Gospel story isn't particularly original. Indeed Richard Beard himself did it in his previous novel, Lazarus is Dead focusing eponymous friend of Jesus (albeit in Beard's re-telling their relationship was more troubled), and this book is the second part of a loose trilogy. [Beard has suggested his third novel in the series will focus on John , set it future-day America] Here Beard concentrates on the resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent acts of the apostles. He presents the novel as a crime story which starts, obviously, with a missing body but rapidly becomes a murder mystery. The victims are clear from the table of contents before the novel even starts: the 12 original disciples and their deaths, in each chapter title, are linked traditional, rather than biblical (except for Judas and James), martyrdom stories for each. E.g. "III JUDE shot with arrows", and with John, the only one popularly believed to a have survived to a long life, the focus of the final chapter called simply "XII JOHN". Indeed Beard seems to have used these traditions as a form of Oulipan constraint on the plot of the novel. And the chief suspects - none other than Jesus himself, if he really didn't die. The chief investigator is Cassius Gallo, official title "Speculator", representative of the occupying Roman forces and answerable to the Complex Casework Unit. In a nod to Beard's previous book, he is already under pressure "after the embarrassment of what happened with Lazarus. He still doesn't understand how they did that." As this suggests, Beard's aim isn't it seems, unlike many other novelists, to give us any radically different perspective on Jesus or his own theological views. Indeed he rather seems to use the topic matter for jokes as much as anything: the first lead on the missing body is "a sighting on the Emmaus road"; “Thomas has privileged information about the health status of Jesus in the period after the crucifixion"; when interrogating the first suspect (and subsequently the first victim) Judas, Cassius Gallio prompts "a local source tells me the way you betrayed him was foretold."; his investigations reveal that none of the city's gardeners "remembers speaking to a distressed middle-aged lady on the day in question at or near the crime scene.";on Stephen's stoning "an Israeli agent called Saul set up the hit to showcase his talents". It's all a little Life of Brian. The last example does speak to the one theological topic that the book does tackle and which becomes integral to the plot as it develops. Namely the role of Paul (formerly Saul) and the suggested difference between the version of Christianity from his epistles vs. that one would glean from the gospels alone. He is, in this novel, the other chief suspect, a rogue former Israeli agent but now a double - or triple? - agent, Rome's "client apostle, because his version of the faith suited the requirements of an advanced nation state. Paul believed in marriage and social stability and paying taxes, solid civilised virtues...Instead of miracles he opts for conference theology with regular breaks from spiritual engagement for complimentary light refreshments...The disciples of Jesus inconvenience him. They're his competition, so the quieter the disciples the stronger the voice of Paul, and one day Jesus will be whoever and whatever Paul decides he is in his letters." One key plot element does seem to depend on a misreading by Beard of scripture - the identity of the beloved disciple from John 21:20-22 who may remain alive until Jesus returns. Except from the bible passage we know who it isn't i.e. Peter. The other non-standard part of Beard's novel is the "quantum fiction" approach - a term I rather dislike as the technique both pre-dates quantum physics and is not directly related to it, but one the author himself has used in interviews. In his own words "The novel is set concurrently now and in the time of the disciples. The effect is of a historical novel set in the present � the former disciples of Jesus are working folk from Lake Galilee, but in Jerusalem they can be bundled into police cars or photographed with a telephoto lens. One of the more freakish conclusions of quantum physics is that the exact location of a particle can never be measured, and my characters exist in two different eras at once. This is partly a response to the idea of ‘eternal�. If the Jesus story is eternal then it happened then but is also happening now. As this suggests, Beard sets his novel in an odd hybrid of the 1st Century and the 21st "in Jerusalem past and present coexist. Possibly the future too.". Again this is clear from the very opening pages when "A boy runs down an alley, a tray of loaves on his head. He dodges a rasping scooter ... Passover in Jerusalem smells like Heaven. And of burned meat from the temple. And the haze of two-stroke.". Similarly, all the images of Jesus that the investigators have to go on are "sculptures and a great many paintings, also the imprint on the shrouds", but when the investigators make a potential sighting, they can send photos via their smartphones to HQ where computers can then scan them against the pictures for a match, and send over the relevant information from Wikipedia. Again at first this seems more for comic effect. But, as the novel progresses Beard makes the effect more interesting with past and present starting to blur. Philip dies in his own Martyrium in Pamukkale, (which was in reality constructed in the 5th Century), with pre-existing information boards explaining his death. And the Apostle Andrew follows Gallio from the UK, by a tracking device planted on his mobile phone, to a seemingly randomly chosen Greek holiday resort Patras. They meet in the Orthodox Agios Andreas Basilica, beneath "an oversized icon of Andrew the discipile of Jesus on cobalt and gold. Andrew is roped to an x-shaped cross." And Beard uses his device to explore the topic of free will vs. omnipotence and predestination. Gallio increasingly realises that the unfolding events seem pre-destined; "everything he made happen corresponded to preparations Jesus and his disciples had made in advance". "The future is not shaped in advance," Gallio thinks, "but can be changed by willed human action. This is a core principle of civilisation as Gallio has been taught to defend it." - but the evidence is otherwise. Beard himself is not a believer, and initially my concern was that he was mining the Gospel story for fun. But the novel does explore some important issues, sympathetically, and the closing pages of the novel: the final confrontations between Gallio, the apostle John and Paul, are genuinely moving. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 14, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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Hardcover
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82
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| 0224089137
| 9780224089135
| 0224089137
| 2.58
| 216
| Jan 28, 2015
| Jan 29, 2015
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it was ok
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"I had this vision of a book in which I would record my total experience, and I knew how it should sound: with all the tones that no one ever admires,
"I had this vision of a book in which I would record my total experience, and I knew how it should sound: with all the tones that no one ever admires, the Gruesome, Tender, Needy, Sleazy, Boring, the Lurid and the Cute. In such tones I would tell me kawaii tale" My 3rd book from the Goldsmiths shortlist, and as with Magnus Mills, an author whose books I have had issues with in the past. Thirlwell draws knowledgeably on a wide range of very worthy influences, particularly from continental Europe (Gombrowicz, Proust, Doestevsky, Hamsun, Kundera etc) but doesn't live up to their standards. He can come across as a poor imitation of Milan Kundera, although, to be fair, one sanctioned by the great man himself. And I'm clearly not alone in my doubts. Of the 930 books on my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ' shelves, only 10 have a worse average rating from Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ readers than Lurid and Cute's (2.79 at the time of writing), [and for 4 of the other 10 I'm the only reviewer]. Albeit dividing opinion isn't necessarily a bad thing as last year's Booker and Goldsmiths shortlisted J proves - almost as poor a rating, but one of my, as well as two distinguished juries', books of 2014. Enough of my preconceptions - would this novel prove the pleasent surprise that Magnus Mills's did? Lurid this novel most definitely is - e.g. a drug fuelled orgy scene followed by a visit to a massage parlour - but cute? More a case of irritating. Actually the full quote in the novel from which the title is taken is much more representative of the tone of the book, but presumably the title "Gruesome, Tender, Needy, Sleazy, Boring, Lurid & Cute.â€� was rejected by the publishers as less commercial. It's not that Thirlwell is a bad writer. It's just that he, rather deliberately, even, writes provocatively bad books. The narrator's tale is packed with trite 'witticisms' - describing a painting he looked at upside down: ("Jesus was standing on his halo, beside a very bright Madonna - I mean the religious kind, not the disco version") and largely clunky similes ("fate was all around me like the crimping on a beer-bottle top."). Yes that is the narrator's, not Thirlwell's voice, but it's the voice to which the reader is forced to listen. Thirlwell himself refers to his style as 'ruthless levity', and it reminded me of Joshua Ferris's dreadful To Rise Again At a Decent Hour from the 2014 Booker shortlist. And turning to the back of the book, what do I find? A tribute to this novel's 'satisfying ironies and verbal dexterity' from none other than Ferris himself. And 'verbal dexterity' isn't even accurate - if anthing Thirlwell has deliberately chosen to make the narrator's voice ineloquent, with sentences such as "The only thing that's made me unlike other people is that me I think much more." He knows the narrator is unlikeable and even has him, while rebuking himself, implicitly rebuke the reader at one point "I'm aware that the entire history of art is about removing the likeable from the picture, it's only the philistine spectators like Nelson who say: Jeez, there was no one in the movie you'd want to like hang out with" Thirlwell, having found the narrator's voice, dropped his previous plan to give the narrator a name (which had been intended to distance the narrator and author) and even changed the description of the character to physically resemble himself (the narrator's wife tells him his problems are "psychosemetic") , deliberately increasing the temptation to identify author and narrator. The text of the story is broken up every few pages by annoying bold sub-headings, designed to tell the story in miniature: e.g. the first chapter (24 pages) "in which our hero wakes up", "to discover his transformation", "whose reality he tries to doubt", "with blood all over the picture", "which creates small traps and impasses", "in the manner of many catastrophic myths", "but nevertheless he does his best" & disappears from the bloody scene" - complete with lack of punctuation. They are Kunderaesque except Milan does it much better and Tom McCarthy uses a similar approach in Satin Island, complete with digital numbering, but again more effectively. The setting is a mishmash ("Mescal diners", "Strange pets, not quite possums or small lemurs but almost", "In every garden people hung these elegant paper lanterns", "People filling the streets with their cortados and their umbrellas", "the Cricket stadium", "Koalas or pigeons were playing in the jacaranda trees"), per Thirlwell himself 'a non- or impossible place', intended to represent global suburbia ("when you travel to any city of your choice you can find yourself at home, just as long as you get out far enough, not too far but just enough" - which the narrator seems to see as a simile for marriage). Artistically a valid approach, but it felt that A Little Life did it better, and again it seems designed primarily to provoke. The narrator suffers, again deliberately, from a gap between his perception of himself as a deep thinker and the reality of his observations: "In my impressions of the world I am super-subtle. Were I ever to be a super-hero, I would be a super-hero of thinking" MY MOTHER Let's not try to analyse everything to death, shall we. Just this once ME But what else can I do?" Thirlwell takes the epigraph for his novel from Hamsun's Hunger, and the narrator makes a clear suggestion that his tale is the 21st Century equivalent of this and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground: "Maybe in some far off century if you wanted to reinvent the social contract, you would have done it with more squalor, living underground in isolation, and losing yourselves in crazy monologues and financial worry and hunger, but in this very bright time it also seemed that you could do it more softly - just in this desire to create a more adventerous existence: with friendships, love affairs, extra or extended families." Indeed one suspects Thirlwell sees the novel equally as a 21st century update of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But this isn't another Kundera - for all the similarities, it couldn't be further from the lyricism of his prose. To give more contemporary references from the Booker and Goldsmiths awards, it's instead a combination of the worst of Satin Island, Little Life and To Rise at a Decent Hour Overall, I can, just, understand why the Goldsmith Jury chose this for their shortlist, and I can see what Thirlwell was trying, if failing, to do (especially helped by the following interview in the excellent Paris Review ), but the fact remains that it was neither an enjoyable nor an enlightening book to read. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 07, 2015
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Oct 10, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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Hardcover
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32
| 
| 1408860023
| 9781408860021
| 1408860023
| 3.56
| 554
| Apr 23, 2015
| Apr 23, 2015
|
really liked it
|
This is the 2nd of the Goldsmith's Prize shortlist for me, and my 5th Magnus Mills novel. I had very mixed feelings on the previous 4 I've read. I love This is the 2nd of the Goldsmith's Prize shortlist for me, and my 5th Magnus Mills novel. I had very mixed feelings on the previous 4 I've read. I love the way he writes books so different from almost anyone else, the carefully controlled deadpan simplicity of his text, and the start of each novel as one establishes the rules for the surreal world he creates. Against that, he doesn't do much with these worlds: there doesn't seem to be a terribly profound meaning hidden under the surface, there isn't usually any particular conclusion or point to the novels, and I rather tire of them by the end. And yet there is something strangely morish which makes me pick up another novel, even though I've rated his previous books only from 3 down to 1 star. He is to me the equivalent of a light snack. It would normally be a fool's errand in any Mills book to treat the novel as too direct an allegory, but that said The Field of the Cloth of Gold seems a rather clearer fable of British history and the tempation to find parallels is more difficult to resist. The title has an obvious reference to Henry XIII, and Mills has said how "it started when I began considering the actual Field of the Cloth of Gold in France, which is where Henry VIII met Francis I. They both had a large pavilion of tents set up. If you go there now, not knowing it’s historical context, it just looks like a big field. So I wondered what would happen if someone happened upon history occurring in an inconspicuous place and not knowing what was going on." ) However, the novel itself is a closer allegory for the much earlier Roman occupation of Britain, the Viking incursions, the coming of Christianity and up to the Norman conquest, with some nods to present day debates on immigration, multi-culturalism and even the north-south divide. At times the novel in both style and subject matter is oddly reminiscent of Ishiguro's Buried Giant. The novel is set in a field, which essentially constitutes an island.: "Situated within the bend of the river, it was effectively separated from all the adjacent fields. The wilderness in the north acted as an additional boundary, and together these factors created a distinct sense of seclusion.", occupied by a number of tent-dwelling settlers. The words "green and pleasant" land while not present, are heavily conveyed, from the biscuit-obsessed narrator who has a John Majoresque (recall "a country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.") sentimental view of the field: "Each of us possessed the tent of our choice, we enjoyed luxurious seclusion, and the weather was warm and sunny. We were a handful of settlers scattered far and wide beneath the broad, blue sky. All around us was peace and tranquillity and, as the summer rolled on, a sense of timelessness descended over the field." With further nods to "Jerusalem", he also sees greatness in the country ("A place where momentous events would unfold and come to fruition") , but which remain stubbornly latent(*): "I eagerly awaited the halycon days which I was certain lay just ahead. Hen's outlook was rather more restrained. 'Halycon days only occur in the past', he said. 'They can't be prophesied.'" (* In fact the momentous events are the history of Britain in microcosm, just told in Mills's understated style and reduced to the petty squabblings of tent dwellers in a field). The field has a clear north-south divide: "The quality of the grass deteriorated the further up the field I progressed. Throughout the north it was coarse and dry, a striking contrast with the verdant south, and presumably a direct consequence of the slope. The land drained from north to south, which meant that the south received more than its fair share of rainwater. Viewed from a northern perspective, this seemed like an injustice...Over recent weeks [Brigant] had developed the idea further, and concluded that life became steadily harder the higher up the slope someone lived...He seemed to think that hardship and discomfort were the sole preserve of the north." There is even an amusing contemporary nod to prime central London buy-to-leave property "the choicest part of the field was being squandered on an empty dwelling, which struck me as unfair." The harmony of the field is upset when the Roman-like settlers arrive, first as a Caeser like expedition (taking the Tincomarus-like figure, Thomas, back with them), then as a Claudius-style occupation. Although between these two events, the "Caeser" figure, Julian, has disappeared ("'Nobody liked Julian', he said, 'so we got rid of him""). They even make the north-south divide permanent by building a completely straight trench ("patently the plan had been to set out a straight line between the pegs, but the tent had got in the way"), forcing one of the field dwellers Brigant to move "'it's probably easier to shift my tent'". The new settlers quickly dominate the field: "Because there were more of them than us, we'd suddenly become the outsiders dwelling on the fringes" (a timely reminder that we are all descended from immigrants in one way or another), largely due to the superior organisational skills and their constant refrain of "Just setting you straight. We're very particular about these details." Most disturbed by the newcomers is the exotic (Boudicca-like) Isabella, who occupies the East of the field and the narrator tries to persuade her of their merits in a way that inevitably brings to mind the "what have the Romans ever done for us" speech from Life of Brian: "Marvellous organisational skills; iron discipline; proper plans and surveys: sophisticated drainage systems; monumental earthworks; communal kitchens and bakeries; bathhouses with hot water available. The list goes on and on" Isabella's main complaint is the uniformity of the newcomers as she favours a multi-cultural society: ""What the field needs is variety. We don't want row upon row of identical tents: we want marquees, douars, shamiyanas, kibitkis, cabanas, tupiks and pandals; we want pavilions with crenellated decorations and swagged contours; and above all we want gorgeous colurs: turquoise, vermilion, indigo, magenta and saffron.' 'Sounds more like a fairground,' remarked Brigant. 'What's wrong with green or brown?'" The narrator, much more easily accepts the changes largely due to his passivity (his plans for action are always foiled by others beating him to it). He is easily bribed into colloboration by milk pudding, selling his birthright "for a mess of pottage" as Isabella biblically has it, pinning him as an Esau. Isabella feels forced to leave, which the newcomers greet with relief "We bent over backwards to accomodate her, but all she did was bombard us with complaints and criticism". But soon the "Romans" leave themselves ("we need to return to headquarters ... this is little more than a far flung province...it had been a burden on their resources which they could really do without under the current circumstances"), leaving behind a copper bath, which seems to stand for their pagan gods. And so the novel continues, including the arrival of a messianic prophet, who condemns the copper bath obsessed south-westerners and whose feet really do tread this green and pleasant land. As I said earlier it would be foolish to try and find the analogy for everything in the book. The logic of the story as it develops tends to take it away from the original close allegory, and given the story of 1000 years is condensed into a few months of life on the field, characters by necessity take on different roles over time. But, unlike Mills' other novels, he succeeded in sustaining my interest to the end. Overall, the best of the 5 of his novels I've read, and his unique approach fully justifies his place on the Goldsmiths shortlist. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 06, 2015
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Oct 07, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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Hardcover
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58
| 
| 0385683421
| 9780385683425
| 0385683421
| 3.44
| 98,076
| Feb 10, 2015
| Feb 10, 2015
|
liked it
|
"But like most families, they imagined they were special. They took great pride, for instance, in their fix-it skills. Calling in a repairman—even one
"But like most families, they imagined they were special. They took great pride, for instance, in their fix-it skills. Calling in a repairman—even one of their own employees—was looked upon as a sign of defeat. All of them had inherited Junior’s allergy to ostentation, and all of them were convinced that they had better taste than the rest of the world. At times they made a little too much of the family quirks—of both Amanda and Jeannie marrying men named Hugh, for instance, so that their husbands were referred to as “Amanda’s Hugh� and “Jeannie’s Hugh�; or their genetic predisposition for lying awake two hours in the middle of every night; or their uncanny ability to keep their dogs alive for eons....That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was just fine. Or maybe it wasn't a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsover" Book 4 from the Booker shortlist and "nothing special" is the verdict. This would make a perfectly fine Richard and Judy book club choice, or a Costa awards contender, but that's the reason why we have different awards, and this is too straightforward for the Booker which should be looking to reward more original fiction. A Spool of Blue Thread tells the story of four generations of the Whitshank family, the founders Junior and his wife Linnae, about whom little is known by even their children ("there was no evidence of his existence prior to 1926*, which seemed an unusually recent year for the start of a family tree" [when Junior would have been in his mid 20s and Linnie just 13]), their son Red and his wife Abby, their children Amanda, Jeanie, Dennie and Stem, and their partners and children. Junior, and following in his footsteps Red are both builders, renowned for their careful craftsmanship, and in their lives also want everything just so, believing, as even more strongly Abby, that their family is special. The only seeming fly in the ointment is Denny : "a blood member of the Whitshank family, one of those enviable families that radiate clannishness and togetherness and just ... specialness: but he trailed around their edges like some sort of charity case." Denny is the prodigal son, and indeed plays a similar role to Jack in Marilynne Robinson's wonderful Gilead trilogy - including Lila which was on this year's Booker longlist. He has an illuminating exchange with Nora, Stem's wife (and after a major falling out with Stem): "'I'd never just disappear; they need me around for the drama' She smiled; her two dimples deepened. 'They probably do,' she said 'I really think they do.'" One of the signs of Denny's rebellious nature, and one that perhaps tell us as much about the rest of the family as about him, is that both when he first elopes with a girl and when he gets married, the Whitshanks find, to their shock, that in each case the other family know much more about Denny than they know about the girls. That's not how it is supposed to work and it is noticable how Amanda and Jeannie's Hughs and Nora are expected to become part of the Whitshank clan e.g. joining the traditional family summer holiday every year. One can see what Tyler is aiming to do. Having set up the perfect family then undermine her own narrative with delayed revelations and back story that reveal the truth behind the veneered facade. Stem their youngest is introduced with the line "Stem had come along when Denny was four", which, 100 pages later, proves to be much more than a longwinded way of saying he is 4 years younger than Denny, and the "a blood member of the Whitshank family" description of the latter (quoted above) then takes on added significance. Denny in particular serves the role of the pricker of myths. He tells Stem "You're just following the family tradition, is all, the wish-I-had-what-someone-else-has tradition - till they do have it. Like Old Junior with hs dream house, or Merrick with her dream husband. Sure! This could be the family's third story. 'Once upon a time', Denny intoned theatrically, 'one of us spent thirty years craving his real mother's voice but after he found it, he realised he didn't like it half as much as his fake mother's voice" Going back in time we realise that even the families "founding myth", the marriage of Junior and Linnie, is built on sand. Their relationship started with a crime, and Junior never really cares for Linnie, instead falling in love with the family home that he first builds and then later buys. He thinks to himself: "she would never know how deeply he had longed to free himself all these years, how he had stayed with her only because he knew she would be lost otherwise, how onerous it had been to go on and on, day after day, setting right what he had done. No she had absolute faith that he had stayed because he loved her. And if he told her otherwise - if he somehow managed to convince her of his sacrifice - she would be crushed, and the sacrifice would have been for nothing." However, some of the backstory serves less purpose - the much rehearsed family story of how Abby fell in love with Red is then explored in a 53 page story that really adds nothing. The more present day characters don't come alive. Tyler tells us how Nora comes from an unusual religious denomination but then does nothing with this, similarly the dynamics amongst the grandchildren are described but then not explored. And perhaps most disappointingly, the reader is hoping for some revelation about Denny, who gets his own section in the closing pages, to justify the whole novel - but it never comes. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 25, 2015
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Sep 25, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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Hardcover
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27
| 
| 1447294823
| 9781447294825
| 1447294823
| 4.30
| 821,637
| Mar 10, 2015
| Aug 13, 2015
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really liked it
| I wanted there to be something too much about the violence, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of e I wanted there to be something too much about the violence, but I also wanted there to be an exaggeration of everything, an exaggeration of love, of empathy, of pity, of horror. I wanted everything turned up a little too high. I wanted it to feel a little bit vulgar in places. Or to be always walking that line between out and out sentimentality and the boundaries of good taste. I wanted the reader to really press up against that as much as possible and if I tipped into it in a couple of places, well, I couldn’t really stop it.Hanya Yanagihara talking about A Little Life in the Guardian (July 2015) I normally like to start a review with a quote from the novel itself, but Hanya Yanagihara made so many odd choices in A Little Life that understanding her intentions seems key to understanding the novel. Book 5 out of 6 from the Booker shortlist and the one mostly likely to divide opinions, even amongst the same person. Overall, while the novel is massively flawed, and in many respects I hated it, it does ultimately stand out as the most interesting and powerful novel on the shortlist. It is much easier in a review to point out the flaws; most so obvious that one assumes - hopes even - that they are deliberate, but even then they are odd choices. Although the worry is that they indicate the want of a good edit. The author refused to let a scalpel be taken to her text; her editor apparently wanted to slim down the novel by at third, and it would have been much the better for it. Indeed leaving only a third would have been even better. Generally the author is clearly of the "tell don't show" school - and indeed tell it at length and over and over again. The text, probably due to the lack of editing, is riddled with unnecessary, one suspects often accidental (see below), repetition, contradictions (we're told Jude started throwing himself deliberately at walls at the monastery but then later that it began after an accidental fall in a motel with Brother Luke) and poorly chosen phrases. For example this, which just doesn't work (due to the juxtaposition "barely more than an alley" and "yet"): "He was still complaining when the reached Lispenard Street. Willem was new enough to the city - he had only lived there a ear - to have never heard of the street, which was barely more than an alley, two blocks long and one block south of Canal, and yet JB, who had grown up in Brooklyn hadn't heard of it either." The shifting tenses sometimes in the same paragraphs (much is told in the conventional past but also present "he goes to the bedroom" and most oddly the future even for current events "he will turn off the shower"), I found unnecessary and annoying. But this may be intended to illustrate how Jude is trapped in a perpetual present (the use of the future tense is followed by "he will be reminded of how trapped he is, trapped in a body he hates, with a paste he hates, and how we will never be able to change either") , and perhaps links to the next point. The plot takes place over 50+ years and yet the world remains permanently, indeed stubbornly, in an ahistorical present. The characters continue to use email ("over the years, at odd moments, I would hear from her, I would get an email"), text, computer discs (right at the end i.e. what must be 2060) and mobile phones, in fact these are frequently referenced. They eat in the same restaurants. Yanagihara avoids all references to time except the occasional one (Jude thinks "his childhood might well have been spent in the nineteenth century not the twenty first" - which dates the novel mostly in the future), and one suspects these were mistakenly inserted since I assume the lack of time references or progress was a deliberate artistic decision. It's not unusual or unreasonable for novels to have little regard to time or place - there are far too many 9/11 novels so for a novel to ignore it is a pleasure - but what's odd is to do so ostentatiously. There are a whole host of people introduced with unnecessary detail and often silly names - "the anaesthesiologist, a friend of Andy’s named Ignatius Mba, whom he’s met before at one of Andy and Jane’s dinner parties" - and then never mentioned again. Or, as with some of their circle such as Phaedra , mentioned at least 20 times but each time solely in a list of names. The author seems, as less subliminally, aware of this tick as she highlights it in others: Willem "admired JB's Felliniesque command of his vast social circle, in which everyone was a colourfully costumed extra." and Malcolm comments of his boss's name, "Joop Rausch, how could it not be fake .. [he is] working for two pretentious men at a firm they had pretentiously named after a pretentious Anne Sexton poem" (one is tempted to add "in a pretentious novel"). So again one assumes there is some artistic message here, presumably to focus the story on Jude, but it seems to have the opposite effect. The details of Jude's childhood should be painful to read, but it is so exaggerated - can anyone really have experienced such abuse, such misfortune in their choice of rescuers; are all monks, care-home workers and lorry drivers rapists - that the impact is actually lessened. And Jude's college friends are all ridiculously successful and ultimately rick. As one of themselves admit, it's odd to be "having money, absurd comic-book-villain money". Another has relatives "convinced that he would someday be an important artist, that his work would hang in major museums" - not an uncommon conviction but rather less common for the author to let it be so as the plot unfolds. Their characters also seem cartoonish with no real lives other than those centred around Jude. JB seems to have built a world-class artistic career only on pictures of Jude and his friends (the author admits that the comment “He needs to get a life!� was scribbled in red ink on various pages about JB by her editor). And somehow Jude has a leading surgeon on permanent tap as his personal medic; again the book acknowledges the absurdity - "even though Andy was an orthopaedic surgeon, he still treated Jude for anything that went wrong, from his back to his legs to flu and cold". Again is this artistic effect - to represent the narcissism of suffering? - or just bad writing? [Incidentally that same sentence is repeated almost verbatim 70 pages letter "he was an orthopaedic surgeon, but he treated him for everything, from chest colds to his back and leg problems.", a typical example of the lack of editing.] The author's hope as expressed in another interview seem to be making rather unfair demands of the reader, surely its for her to show us there is more to the characters: But I always knew they were someone else, that they had other lives, other interests, other qualities, or I wouldn't have been able to write them authoritatively. One hopes, as a writer, that your readers can sense as well some of what you’re not saying about your characters, that one senses the totality of their conception.Even Jude is, when not suffering extremely, succeeding supremely, with no middle ground. He is apparently able, and very early in his recovery from the trauma he suffered, to be the star student at law school and simultaneously do a Maths Master's at MIT and also hold down a part time job in a bakery, at which he, of course, excels. And despite all the suffering and medical appointments in his adult life he somehow manages to be a leading world-class litigator working 24/7. When a less wholesome character does enter Jude's adult life, the reader can hear the sinister horror music playing in the background, so heavily does the author signpost what will happen. Caleb, when he first meets Jude at a dinner party and talking, ostensibly, about his job says "what you have to do, in my position, is construct a system of governance within the company, and then make sure it's enforceable and punishable...you have to present it as the bye-laws of their own small universe, and convince them that if they don't follow these rules, their universe will collapse. As long as you can persuade them of this, you can get them to do what you need". The parallels with the childhood abuse of Jude are too screamingly obvious (and to make sure the reader has got the point, even while first giving Caleb a tour of his flat Jude wonders in response to a comment that he must avoid using his wheelchair "was this an expression of concern, or was it a threat"). Here Yanagihara's point seems to be that entering into such an obviously ill-fated relationship is part of Jude's ongoing sense of worthlessness. Even when the relationship inevitably turns abusive "he feels about Caleb the way he once felt about Brother Luke: someone in whom he had, rashly, entrusted himself, someone in whom he had places such hopes, someone he hoped could save him. But even when it became clear that they would not, even when his hopes turn rancid, he was unable to disentangle himself from them, he was unable to leave." The novel also relies on the delayed disclosure of what Jude suffered, indeed it starts as a conventional New York post-college novel and the reader should only gradually realise that the novel is, in reality, very different. In part this seems to justify the excessive length of the novel. This may well have been an effective authorial slight-of-hand were it not rather thwarted by the excessive publicity around the novel. So why 4 stars... The topic tackled - of abuse and of the lifelong impact it causes on the victim ("could you have a real friendship if some part of you was always expecting betrayal")is important, topical and dealt with in a brave and unflinching way. And the book avoids any suggestion of a happy ending; a letter from one of his closest friends tells Jude "things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realise that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully." But Jude's life is one of the exceptions - whatever success he has is inadequate compensation. Indeed Yanagihara's ultimate point is that excessive wealth and success can not compensate for the lifelong trauma from childhood abuse (and nor can the standard American answer - therapy): "Do you want to spend your life just being boring, and average, and typical" "Yes JB." Jude has said,,giving him that gaze he sometimes summoned which was intimidating, even slightly scary, in its flat blankness "That's in fact exactly what I want" For me the most powerful parts of the novel were those dealing with the difficulties of those who most love Jude. His best friend and partner, Willem, eventually realises that he is never going to make Jude "better": "He knew Jude would keep cutting himself. He knew he would never be able to cure him. The person he loved was sick, and would always be sick, and his responsibility was not to make him better but to make him less sick" [Although Yanagihara does rather paint herself in a corner with the Willem relationship and clearly realised she was in danger of giving the novel a happy ending. The solution she chooses (view spoiler)[killing off Willem and another of Jude's best friends in a car accident (hide spoiler)] was a disappointing cop-out.] As a parent myself, the most emotional sections were those written in the first person by Harold, Jude's mentor and eventually adopted parent. He concludes the novel, powerfully: "That he died so alone is more than I can think of; that he died thinking that he owed us an apology is worse; that he died still stubbornly believing everything that he was taught about himself � after you, after me, after all of us who loved him � makes me think that my life has been a failure after all, that I have failed at the one thing that counted." ---------------- To end the review on a lighter note, one of my favourite Booker sports is spotting hidden and completely accidental links between the novel, almost as if they were buried there as Easter eggs. In a joke reference to Harold's annual failed culinary experiments (e.g. stuffed trout) which always end with an emergency turkey for Thanksgiving, they joke about "opening a restaurant on the square that only serves turkey stuffed with other kinds of meat". In A Spool of Blue Thread, Amanda's Hugh "owned a restaurant called Thanksgiving which served only turkey dinners". ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 28, 2015
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Sep 30, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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Paperback
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13
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| B0DT1JD49Q
| 3.89
| 36,874
| Oct 02, 2014
| Jun 04, 2015
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really liked it
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“Make me get this straight. You writing book ’bout the Singer, the gangs, the peace treaty. A book on the posses? You know, each one of those is a who
“Make me get this straight. You writing book ’bout the Singer, the gangs, the peace treaty. A book on the posses? You know, each one of those is a whole book. What you going to write about anyway? You have no proof of anything.� ... You don't have no sense of how to put everything together. Or maybe you do but you just don't know how to...That why you writing a book? Because you can figure it out or you still writing to figure it out? ... You know something, maybe you should write this book. I know, I know what I just say, but now me checking things deeper. Maybe somebody should put all of this craziness together, because no Jamaican going do it. No Jamaican can do it, brother either we too close or somebody going stop we. It don’t even have to get that far, just the fear that somebody going come after we going make we stop. But none of we going see that far. ... Maybe that too big for you. Maybe that too big for one book, and you should keep things close and narrow. Focused. I mean to rahtid, watch me asking you to write the whole four hundred year reason why my country will always be trying not to fail." The final book from the Booker Shortlist, and I saved the best till last. The best tribute I can pay to A History of Seven Killings is that it's almost 700 pages long, but I found myself deliberately slowing down as I approached the final chapters, I didn't want the novel to end. After slogging through the other 5 books almost as a duty, this was genuinely enjoyable. That's not to say that it is flawless, far from it, but it is never less than interesting and I would echo the author's own comments in an interview ( "But one of the reasons why it’s a big novel is almost for the same reason you have something like a double album. Because I think—I hope, and so far some critics seem to agree with me and some critics don’t—that a bigger novel is a wider canvas to experiment with. And even if the experiment fails, it’s such a big canvas that there’s enough to recommend it otherwise." Perhaps the main criticism I would make it whether this is really a literary novel rather a movie script. It's not so much the obvious comparisons to James Ellroy that concern me, but rather those to film directors. The much quoted New York times review that "it’s like a Tarantino remake of “The Harder They Come� but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner" rather misses the point that only the last of those is an author. The Faulkner comparison comes because Marlon James constructs a History of Seven Killings via first person narration from a stream of different characters. He himself cites as influences not only the obvious As I Lay Dying, but also the very worthy Savage Detectives and My Name is Red. The book is perhaps best remembered (and pastiched) for the sections in Jamaican patois, but even here James convincingly distinguishes between a range of very distinct voices within the array of gangsters and drug dealers that populate the text, and we also hear from CIA agents, a dead politician, clandestine right-wing operatives and a music journalist. The most compelling characters are the chilling but charismatic Josey Wales, who himself evolves over the text from villain to victim, and the middle-class Nina Burgess, who gets caught up in the events the book depicts and flees, taking up multiple identities (Kim Clarke / Dorcas Palmer / Millicent Segree) - per the author she's "not fooled by anyone but herself. She's kidding herself all the time but knows exactly what's going on in the world." There are also some wonderful set piece verbal (and physical) confrontations between characters. Most memorably, and as quoted at the start of my review, Tristran Philips, a member of the US Jamaican gang the Ranking Dons and former member of the peace council in Jamaica, talking to Alex Pierce, an American journalist (originally for Rolling Stone, latterly the New Yorker) who has turned his simple assignment to write about the The Singer (aka Bob Marley) into a much wider investigation, rather akin to the novel itself. The one character we don't hear from is Bob Marley himself, referred to as the Singer (except in one odd case where one character refers to him by name), and who is largely mute even in the occasional scene where he appears direct. The clear literary precedent here is the famous Esquire magazine article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold". One interesting - and I assume deliberate - point is the number of times characters' worry or acknowledge that their internal have been accidentally vocalised. I counted at least ten occurrences: "I didn't realize me was singing it out loud", "I hope I didn't say all that out loud", "I realize I've been thinking out loud", "'Everybody heard you!' 'Oh, oh no.'", "You'll start to think out loud", "Did I think that or say it out loud", "She realized she was reading out loud", "Did I think it or say it?", "Didn't even realize I was thinking out loud", "I hope I didn't just say shit out loud" The scope of the narrative is ambitious - mixing Jamaican politics, gang warfare, CIA cold war political chicanery, and the cocaine / crack trade in the US - and centres on the brief Marley-inspired period when the two warring factions in Jamaica almost came to peace. The length of the novel, wide scope and array of characters could make this confusing for the reader, but the novel rewards careful reading, for example tracing the Seven Killings (view spoiler)[of 7 of the 8 characters (Josey Wales, BamBam, Weeper, Demus, Funky Chicken, Leggo Beast and an unnamed Jungle gangster and te lone survivor Heckle) who attempt to kill The Singer (hide spoiler)]. As to how eight killers with machine guns can actually fail, as in the real,life incident, to kill their unarmed target, Josey offers this explanation: "It's bad enough that plenty man and plenty woman have the Singer off as a prophet, but kill him and the man graduate to martyr. This way the whole world know that guess what, the prophet is just a man like any other man, he can get shot like any other man - and like any other man in this country, not even he safe. I shoot that man off his pedestal and he fall back to man size." And James holds it together brilliantly. As he explains in interviews, this is the result of careful planning ("Even if I don't write about it, I need to know that Nina was making herself a cup of coffee while Josey Wales was killing this guy"), which is turn gives him the control that "allows me to be spontaneous." (See here for an example of his plot notes ) The novel is fiction, but deals with real events, and showcases brilliantly how fiction can often get nearer to the truth than history or biography. Or as James's epigraph, a Jamaican proverb, has it: “If it no go so, it go near so� ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 30, 2015
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Oct 04, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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Paperback
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42
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| 0307593959
| 9780307593955
| 0307593959
| 3.23
| 5,738
| Feb 17, 2015
| Feb 17, 2015
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liked it
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"We see things shroudedly, as through a veil, an over-pixellated screen. When the shapeless plasma takes on form and resolution, like a fish approachi
"We see things shroudedly, as through a veil, an over-pixellated screen. When the shapeless plasma takes on form and resolution, like a fish approaching us through murky waters or an image looming into view from noxious liquid in a darkroom, when it begins to coalesce into a figure that discernible, if ciphered, we can say: This is it, stirring, looming, even if it isn't really, if it's all just ink-blots." Book 1 from the Booker shortlist and a decent start - not winner-quality, but worth its place. This quote from the opening page, inspired by the Turin shroud (and with a seeming nod to 1 Corinthians 13:12 and 2 Corinthians 3:15-16) and by the information-overload caused by modern technology, sums up nicely the thesis that McCarthy sets out in the rest of his novel. This is by no means a conventional novel - as the narrator says "events! if you want those, you'd best stop reading now". That I regard as a good thing. My quibble would be that the author doesn't quite have the courage of his aesthetic convictions. He chooses to hide what one suspects are his personal views behind a fictional narrator "U" (in contrast to the more honest Sebaldian narrator). And he covers the lack of "events!" with a semblance of a story - his friend's thyroid cancer, and a bizarrely pointless sidestory about his girlfriend caught up in the aftermaths of protest at the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa that, in the narrator's own words is "just ** weird." and which feels like a short story he found lying on his reject pile and tacked on to this novel. He writes well about technology, a topic that is relatively under-tackled in literary fiction. For example I enjoyed an extended piece on buffering of videos on the internet that links into his wider anthropological themes: "what I was actually watching was nothing less than the skeleton, laid bare, of time and memory itself. Not our computers' time and memory, but our own...We require experience to stay ahead, if only by a nose, of our own consciousness of experience - if for no other reason that the latter needs to make sense of the former, to (as Peyman would say) narrate it both to ourselves and others, and, for this purpose, has to be fed with a constant, unsorted supply of fresh sensations and events." And there are great and quotable one-liners, for example another set piece on procrastination - the narrator making elaborate preparations to write his magnum opus but never quite starting - ends with him being distracted by an internet video of an oil slick in the Arctic snow and concluding "I saw ink polluting paper, words marring the whiteness of a page." However, one struggles to find much of real substance behind his eloquence and one ends up feeling curiously unsatisfied. One suspects he sees himself as the Kundera of the internet age (as my twin brother pithily observed) but he lacks Kundera's carefully constructed lyricism. This quote from the narrator rather describes my experience of McCarthy's writing: "Steel and glass columns seguing into vaulted cupolas and stilted arches, tiled muqarnas, dwindling minarets that seemed, at their cloud-laced peaks, to shed their own materiality, turn into vapour." ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Sep 21, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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55
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| 3.77
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liked it
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Aug 11, 2015
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Apr 14, 2017
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79
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| 3.15
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it was ok
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Nov 30, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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78
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| 3.14
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it was ok
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Dec 03, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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73
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| 3.71
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it was ok
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Nov 26, 2015
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Nov 25, 2015
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49
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| 4.02
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liked it
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Nov 24, 2015
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Nov 20, 2015
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57
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| 2.83
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liked it
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Nov 17, 2015
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Nov 13, 2015
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51
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| 3.59
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liked it
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Nov 18, 2015
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Nov 13, 2015
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18
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| 3.82
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really liked it
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Nov 05, 2015
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Oct 31, 2015
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56
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| 3.48
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liked it
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Nov 08, 2015
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Oct 31, 2015
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6
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| 4.00
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really liked it
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Nov 12, 2015
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Oct 29, 2015
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81
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| 3.40
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it was ok
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Oct 30, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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44
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| 3.84
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liked it
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Oct 29, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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46
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| 3.73
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liked it
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Nov 03, 2015
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Oct 26, 2015
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17
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| 3.56
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really liked it
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Oct 14, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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82
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| 2.58
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it was ok
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Oct 10, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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32
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| 3.56
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really liked it
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Oct 07, 2015
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Oct 01, 2015
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58
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| 3.44
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liked it
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Sep 25, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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27
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| 4.30
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really liked it
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Sep 30, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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13
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| 3.89
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really liked it
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Oct 04, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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42
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| 3.23
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liked it
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Sep 21, 2015
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Sep 17, 2015
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