Fran Landesman - Collected Poems

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A welcome collection

It is good to have Fran Landesman's poems collected in a single volume.  I was aware of her only from odd poems in anthologies or quoted occasionally by someone else, so I am glad to be able to take a serious look at her work – and it's generally very good.

Fran Landesman generally writes in formal stanzas using both rhyme and metre.  There's often an almost childlike simplicity to her metre which in the early poems doesn't work so well; some come across as rather amateurish sub-Dorothy Parker stuff – especially as her rhythm is pretty shaky and forced at times.  However, in the later poems it's a much more effective style: more tightly controlled and the maturity and skill she's developed make the contrast much more effective between the often umpty-tumpty feel of the rhythm and the more serious content. 

Her subject matter is often love affairs gone wrong, the yearnings of the heart and the sexist nonsense which she spent a lot of time pointing out and subverting very effectively.  It's often poignant and quite penetrating, and it's also witty and sometimes genuinely funny – like Yankee Doodle Londoner about the differences between US and UK English usages, for example. To give an example of her style, I liked "She" (for Hanja) which begins:

She so pretty, She so crazy

So delightful and so lazy

She make pictures, She make babies

All her life is full of "maybes"

She can light your darkest hours

She got visions, she got powers

Everything She makes unravels

Got no money, still She travels…

A very believable and recognisable portrait, I thought.

I don't think this is great poetry, to be honest, but there's some very good verse here which is often evocative and thoughtful, and the occasional very different-feeling poem, like the extremely atmospheric "Boy" for example, brings a sense of the depth which can sometimes get lost among the bouncing stanzas.  I'm glad to have this and to have made the acquaintance of these poems.  Fran Landesman's work is well worth reading and preserving, and I can recommend this collection.

Ruth Ozeki - A Tale For The Time Being

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Readable and intelligent

I thought this a very good book in many ways and although it did take me a long time to get into it, I found it a very involving and rewarding read in the end.

Ruth Ozeki writes very readable prose which is sometimes rather beautiful but never tips over into the self-regarding. The story, well summarized elsewhere, is of a writer (Ruth) on a remote Canadian island who discovers, washed-up on the beach, a container with letters and the diary of a Japanese schoolgirl (Nao). The narrative alternates between the diary and Ruth reading it and investigating its story and its author. I confess that I found the first 100 pages or so difficult to get into and a bit stilted and self-conscious, but Nao's voice and her insights into Japanese society drew me in eventually, and I found her story involving and touching. I never quite felt the same about Ruth's sections which always felt slightly artificial and mannered to me, although Ozeki generates a very good sense of place and atmosphere around the characters.

There is a lot of philosophical content here, much of which is very good. It includes some rather profound insights about love, about growing up and learning to look outside yourself and about Zen. Late in the book there is also quite a bit about quantum physics. My heart sinks a bit when I realise that a novelist is starting on quantum physics because it often degenerates into dreadful nonsense, but to Ozeki's credit she gets the physics right, although I thought that her drawing of parallels between quantum physics and Zen were less successful and didn't really add up to that much. (But then, from Fritjof Capra's The Tao Of Physics onward there has been a great deal of nice-sounding verbiage and a good deal less real substance written about physics and Zen, so she's not alone.)

I could also have done without the mystical elements toward the end. (I won't give any spoilers) I could see what Ozeki was driving at and why she structured it as she did, but in a factual narrative it seemed a little silly in places. Not quite Carlos Castaneda, thank heavens, but heading that way at times.

This review may seem rather more critical than I mean it to be. I enjoyed the book in the end and think it had some important things to say. I did have reservations, but would still recommend it as a readable, intelligent and in places quite profound book.

Rochester - Selected Poems - Oxford

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good selection

This is a very good little edition, containing most of Rochester's best poems. I have a now out-of-print Penguin Complete Rochester edition, but wanted a more portably-sized volume and was also interested in what a new editor had to say. I was very pleased on all counts.

Rochester's popular reputation is generally based more on his behaviour than on his poetry. It is true that he was a spectacular rake and that his debauchery leading to an early death was the stuff of legend. This is often reflected in his work, but there is far more to Rochester than that. This is a very good selection of all shades of his poetry, from the frankly filthy (but often amusing) to the introspective and rather deep. For example, this from Upon Nothing (although I admit it lacks mathematical rigour) is a prescient summation of our current view of the origin of the universe:
"Ere time and place were, time and place were not,
When primitive Nothing Something straight begot,
Then all proceeded from the great united - What?"

Do be warned (if you don't know already) that many of these poems are not for the faint of heart or prudish. They often deal frankly with all sorts of sexual practices, and use some very blunt language including the c-word (used to brilliant comic effect in The Imperfect Enjoyment, for example), but this is fine, and sometimes genuinely tender and thoughtful poetry.

There is a scholarly and readable introduction by Paul Davis which I very much appreciated, a helpful chronology of Rochester's life and full notes on the texts. I think this is an excellent book for anyone looking for somewhere to start with Rochester or for anyone who wants a well-edited selection, however familiar you may be with him. Very warmly recommended.

Natasha Solomons - The Song Collector

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific novel

I think this is a terrific novel.  The publishers kindly sent me a copy for review and I enjoyed it enormously – it is thoughtful, humane, touching and very funny at times, and it has important things to say about family, the meaning of home, the difference between artifice and genuine human experience and other things.

The story is narrated by Harry Fox-Talbot ("Fox") in two intercut times: as a young man in the years following the Second World war and as an old man in the years following the death of his wife in 2000.  Fox is a composer and devotee of folk music (the song collector of the title) and its connection to the land and its history.  The story is of Fox's life, his music, his loves and relationships and his fight to save the old family estate in Dorset as the family runs out of money.  Frankly, it doesn't sound that enticing, but Natasha Solomons writes so well and with such clear insight coupled with warmth of heart that I found it completely engrossing.

Solomons writes in lovely, unmannered, readable prose which is a pleasure to read.  She writes wonderfully well about music and has an ear for a striking simile, too, so a cup falls and breaks with "a xylophone crash" for example.  She paints vivid pictures of landscapes and seasons, and her characters are wholly believable.  Their voices, in particular, are exactly right – like the eight-year-old complaining that his mother can't distinguish good piano playing from mediocre because she has "stupid ears."  Fox's narrative voice is pitch-perfect, I think, both as a privileged young man in the forties and fifties and as a grumpy old man in the current century.  It is witty (and laugh-out-loud funny at times), perceptive and exactly right in the language he uses making him completely real to me.  He makes remarks as a young man like "I like the cellist very much, but not when he plays his cello," which tells us a great deal in a few words about both the subject and the speaker.  Then there are genuinely funny but also very perceptive comments from the older Fox on TV talent shows, and the horribly artificial perfection of a Florida retirement community, for example, and the portrait of an old man coming to terms with the modern world, his own mortality and his past is insightful, humane and very affecting.

I could go on, but this review is probably already too long.  I think this book has real humanity and profundity while being utterly engaging and easy to read.  It is funny in places and very moving in others.  I think that Natasha Solomons has established herself as a significant novelist, and I hope this attract the attention it deserves.  I loved it, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

5/5
Review:

Unexpectedly enjoyable

I was expecting to hate this book. I forced myself to try it because people had gone on about it so much, but I really didn't like the descriptions I'd heard: 500-plus pages, visions of a dystopian future, a fractured timescale with six loosely-linked narratives each nested within the previous one, and so on and so on. It just reeked to me of a self-regarding author determined to show the judging panels of literary prizes how terribly clever he was, and with no interest whatsoever in whether anyone normal would actually be able to read the thing.

Well, I was completely wrong. I thought it was absolutely terrific. Interesting, thoughtful, readable and - most surprisingly of all - page-turningly suspenseful and exciting quite a lot of the time. I thought it had a lot of thoughtful and thought-provoking things to say about exploitation and the abuse of power, and about the possible consequences of both humanity and inhumanity. The different voices are really well done, with the historic and present-day(ish) ones sounding absolutely authentic and the future ones chillingly believable both in the language they use and what they say with it. The stories are involving, occasionally humorous, sometimes sad and sometimes extremely touching. For example, the few paragraphs when a character in a train passes some of the places of his youth and sees them much changed are really affecting, I thought, even though the character himself is thoroughly odious.

I would urge you to try this book. A good many people hated it book and did find it as terrible as I expected to, and you may hate it too, but you won't have lost much. On the other hand, you may be surprised to find it as enjoyable and rewarding as I did. It's worth the risk - if you do find it's for you, you'll never forget it.

Graham Farmelo - The Strangest Man

5/5
Review:

A cracking biography

This is a really excellent book. It is fascinating and thoroughly engrossing as well as being funny, touching and very sad in places. Some biographies are worthy and turgid, others full of racy but tenuous speculation. This is neither - Graham Farmelo has a deep affection for this subject but preserves a commendable objectivity. He gives a fine account of Dirac's life and work in prose which is a pleasure to read and with a perfectly judged leaven of amusing stories and poignant personal revelation.

Dirac was (as you will almost certainly know if you're considering this book) the greatest English physicist since Newton, and considered to be almost on a par with Einstein. That he is so little known is largely due to his astonishing reticence and at times almost hermit-like attitude to other people. Farmelo gives an excellent account of both the amusing and the sad aspects of this, and in a brief chapter at the end of the book puts forward the idea (meticulously backed by evidence) that Dirac was autistic. It's very plausible, and I particularly like the way in which he never uses the biography itself to expound this thesis. It's exemplary biographical writing.

Physicists shouldn't look to this book to give a detailed account of Dirac's work - that can be found elsewhere and this is a more general biography, giving an excellent sense of Dirac's life and why what he did was so important, with what seems to me to be a very well-balanced description of the work for the general reader. Non-physicists needn't worry too much about the physics - it is kept to a very descriptive level and even if you can't follow all of it, the book will still give great rewards.

It's a cracking book, very warmly recommended.

Neil Jordan - Mistaken

4/5
Review:

A very rewarding book

After finding the first hundred pages hard going in places I enjoyed this book very much. It is a poetic, meditative account of growing up and ageing, the choices we make and those that are made for us and how things might have turned out if either had been different. The book's central idea of the narrator and his double often being mistaken for each other is well developed and ingeniously used to illustrate what Jordan is trying to say about how lives develop, and the later part of the book has a very gripping story.

Neil Jordan has the ability to pick out those few details which capture a scene or an atmosphere perfectly. For example, the narrator as a boy in the early 60s catches a bus thus: "...I ran, jumped on to the tailboard, grabbed the rail and climbed the stairs to the upper deck. The cigarette smoke was thick, the windows dripping with condensation...", which really struck a chord with me. I am sure other readers will find flashes of their own past brought vividly to life in the same way, and it is one of the great strengths of the book.

I found the events and characters very well-drawn and believable, and Jordan also tells a very good involving story which I found quite heartbreaking in places. My only criticism of this book is that in the first hundred or so pages the fractured, occasionally confusing timescale and the extremely leisurely pace did begin to pall, and I thought the poetic language and descriptions occasionally spilled over into self-indulgence. However, the latter two-thirds of the book are really impressive and enjoyable, and have left me with powerful images and plenty to think about. It's a very rewarding book and even if you find the opening a struggle it is well worth persevering with.

Ian Rankin - Saints of the Shadow Bible

5/5
Review:

Another cracker from Rankin 

Just to add another voice to the chorus of praise for this book. It's a fine Rankin novel, which is very high praise.

Rebus is back on the force as a DS, with his old station and colleagues from his first days as a rookie constable uunder investigation. Rankin uses this device very well to create a subtle, thoughtful and gripping thriller with genuine intellectual content. Just what we would expect from him by now, really.

I would just add a small caveat. Rankin's prose is normally flawless - it carries you along, it's perfectly judged and you don't notice it much, which is exactly what you want in a well-told story like this. Just occasionally in Saints Of The Shadow Bible, I felt a bit of a glitch as Rankin strives for unnecessary and sometime inappropriate synonyms for "said," for example. People "state," or "intone" or "comment" when they're just saying something normally, and they "snap back" rather too often so it becomes a bit of a tic. It's a tiny thing which doesn't detract from the excellence of the book, but I did think it was noticeable.

If you need any encouragement from me to read this book, you have it. It's a cracker which I can recommend warmly.

Nathan Filer - The Shock Of The Fall

5/5
Review:

Quite brilliant

For once this is a novel which justifies the publisher's hyperbolic claims - it really is terrific. I found it utterly engrossing, readable, funny, enlightening and very moving.

This is the story of Matthew, a young man who suffers from schizophrenia. It is narrated by Matthew himself and one of the most striking things about the book is the brilliant authenticity of his narrative voice. I am no expert on schizophrenia, but to this layman it felt and sounded utterly convincing, shifting in tone according to his medication and whether he is taking it, capturing things like Matthew's anger, wit, bitterness and sadness with remarkable vividness and painting an unforgettable picture of the things which happen to him. It took me right inside that young man's head and gave me a wholly believable picture and understanding of what he is going through and why he behaves as he does.

The story is superbly told. The structure is fragmented as Matthew writes in various places and states of mind and we get his history woven into descriptions of what is going on as he writes. Again, this is excellently done and really adds to the feel and sense of the book rather than just being a novelistic trick. Other characters and places are brilliantly painted and he captures (and sometimes excoriates) the language and types of speech of others (especially medical staff) extremely well. I found the whole thing compelling in that way where I felt very glad to have half an hour free to read some more.

I think there's always a worry with a book like this that it is using a Big Subject and a Clever Narrative Voice to market a mediocre novel. This does nothing of the kind: it avoids mawkishness, it is never sentimental and it treats its subject with respect even when being very funny about it. The whole thing is intelligent, honest and compassionate.

Comparisons with Mark Haddon are inevitable. This is a different story from The Curious Case but I genuinely think it is as good - and I know that's really saying something. This is one of the most involving and memorable books I have read for quite some time. Very, very warmly recommended.

Virginia Macgregor - What Milo Saw

2/5
Review:

Not for me

I'm afraid I don't think this is as good most people seem to.  It has its merits but I thought it was pretty badly flawed.

The main protagonist is Milo, a young boy with retinitis pigmentosa which means he has vision effectively in a small pinhole.  Milo is an earnest, incredibly good-hearted boy who lives with his mother and his great-grandmother, whom he looks after until she moves into a Care Home, leaving him to get to the bottom of and sort out poor treatment in the home, the tribulations of various residents, the problems of a Syrian refugee who is an illegal immigrant, his mother's incipient depression, his parents' divorce and reconciliation, problems at school…and a few other things, too.

I found this one of the book's problems – it tackles far too much, making it both implausible and rather convoluted.  We get narratives from four points of view, which is too many, and the prose was very one-paced.  It needed a variety of tone and rhythm, and cried out for some real humour which Hamlet the pig didn't really provide for me.  The whole thing just went on too long and I found the ending, which was intended to be a Wonder-style triumph, a bit obvious and saccharine.

I also worry that Milo's visual impairment seemed to have very little real bearing on the plot or anything else.  Much of the time it simply isn't important or even mentioned when it should be important, and gave me the impression of having just been bolted on to give the book a sympathetic aura.  Books like the excellent She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick show how this can be done with real depth, empathy and humour; retinitis pigmentosa is a serious and important topic, but its presence here felt rather manipulative to me.

I'm sorry to be so critical.  Others have enjoyed this far more than I did and didn't find the same flaws in it so don't be put off, but I can't, in all honesty, recommend this.

Bradley Somer - Fishbowl

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Flawed but very good in parts

Trying a book like this with a quirky and amusing-sounding premise is always a risk. Sometimes they turn out to be very good, and sometimes they turn out to be pretty terrible. In my view, this is both, but with more of the good than the terrible.

This is really a book about the interwoven stories of a diverse group of residents of an apartment block, some of which are very well done. Ian the plummeting goldfish is incidental to much of the book and we only hear about him occasionally - which is just as well, because I found the sections involving Ian tedious, self-indulgent and nothing like as funny as they thought they were. I nearly gave up after two chapters, one involving Ian and the other an overblown and pretentious introduction to the building in which the stories take place, but I'm glad I didn't because there's a good deal here to enjoy.

It is hard to give even the smallest flavour of the stories without revealing more than I would have liked to know beforehand, but they are all humane, insightful and often rather touching. We get the minutiae of the characters' innermost thoughts, which are generally very well done and convincing. It reminded me a little of Richard Brautigan in places, and although Somer doesn't quite have Brautigan's depth of gentle, compassionate insight he does well in revealing the humanity, both noble and flawed, in his characters. I enjoyed a lot of it and some will stay with me, I think. This passage may give a flavour; Garth is climbing the stairs to his floor and stops for breath when a boy runs straight past him:
"This stairwell, he thinks, it's the centre of unadulterated loneliness and I'm in the middle of it.
How is it possible to barely know anyone in a world full of people? Garth wonders. How is it that no-one really knows me after thirty-seven years?....
That kid, he thinks, he just came and went. All I know is his skinny legs and his red Crushes and then he is gone. And what am I to him? A fat guy in a stairwell blocking the way to his computer games or his supper with his mom or wherever he was rushing to.
And now I'm gone.
Like I was never even here in the first place."

I found that rather affecting, and there are plenty of other good moments (many of them more uplifting than that one).

For me, this would have been a lot better without the goldfish and the conceits and authorial showing-off which surround him, but the bulk of this book is warm, well-written, humane and rather memorable. Well worth a try, I'd say.

Alex Grecian - The Yard

 1/5

Review:
Victorian London? "No way, dude," as they apparently used to say then

I don't like writing wholly critical reviews but in truth I thoroughly disliked this book. It purports to be about the Victorian police force in London, but fails to convince in any way. My copy carries an endorsement from Jeffrey Deaver promising that it is "rich with detail, atmosphere and history." It isn't. The descriptions of London (such as they are) are feeble and generic, and the language - so vital in generating a sense of period - is ludicrously inappropriate. The dialogue in particular is absurd. This is supposed to be London in 1889 but within just the first few pages people use such phrases as "no worries", "I'm right on it", and "he's heading up the investigation." These weren't in use in London in 1989, never mind 1889 and phrases like "Where was the beat cop?" still aren't. Conversation is liberally sprinkled with "yeah", "sure" and the like. It's all as phoney as Dick van Dyke's cockney accent and it destroyed any possible atmosphere or authenticity, making the book almost unreadable for me.

I wasn't convinced by the characters, the plot, the language or the period setting. This is a run-of-the-mill psychotic serial killer story with many of the clichés of the genre well in evidence. It would have been unremarkable set in the USA in the present day; set in a paper-thin caricature of Victorian London it is plain silly.

Others have obviously enjoyed the book but I really, really didn't, and to me at least, an American author trying to pass this off to a British audience is simply insulting.

Simon Willams - Torn

4/5
Review:

Funny and serious
I enjoyed this book. I was sent a copy for review and although it has its flaws, I found it generally well-written, funny in places and with a good many shrewd observations to make.

Simon Williams tells the story of how, as an Australian from a small town in Queensland, he ended up working as a physiotherapist in Florida. His often humorous experiences of the USA and its people and his infatuation with playing rugby make up the majority of the book, but his motivation for writing it was really to expose the terrible pain and injustice he has suffered as his wife illegally abducted his son to Brazil, and the impotence of any agency to help. It's a harrowing tale and one to make you very angry on his behalf - and on behalf of others who have suffered similarly - but the bulk of the book is a rather Bill Bryson-esque account of the quirks of the USA as seen by an outsider. These - especially his observations on the health system - are shrewd and witty, and the whole book has a humorous tone to it which I enjoyed.

I have to say that the story of his son's abduction seemed oddly placed here and because of its scattered nature it lost some of its impact for me, but overall it's a very enjoyable, readable book. Some interest in rugby would help but it's not essential, and I can recommend this: it made me smile a lot and says important things, too.

Annie Barrows - The Truth According To Us

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A delight

I enjoyed this book enormously. I didn't really expect to like it from the description - a family's story of secrets and relationships set in small-town, Depression-ear West Virginia didn't entice, and nor did the unimaginative title. However, I loved The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, and I thought that If Roman Clodia liked this that much (do read her review here) then I'd give it a chance - and I'm extremely glad I did.

Anything I add to the plot summary on this page would give away more than I'd have wanted to know myself - and anyway, the plot is only one aspect of what makes this so good. There are developing stories which held me in tightly, including one climactic confrontation scene which was absolutely riveting and left me with a pounding pulse and lots to think about, but the real point of this book is the characters, their interaction with each other and the setting. All are beautifully done, and Annie Barrows has created something quite special here.

The story is told in three voices: in that of Willa, a bright and literate twelve-year-old who reminded me a little of an older version of Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird, in letters between characters and in a third-person authorial narrative. I found the juxtaposition of these a little awkward at times, but it's all so well done that I didn't really mind. Barrows creates a thoroughly convincing sense of time and place and draws a wonderful cast of diverse characters. The prose is excellent; it is readable and unfussy while being very descriptive and often quietly penetrating, like this description:
"Mrs. Lacey was terribly old, frighteningly old, slumped with time, knotted and lined and half belonging to another world. Jottie had called her "the last of the great ladies" and Layla saw what she meant. There was something monumental about her, a dignity of endurance, of being the only one left."  I found the whole thing, even at nearly 500 pages, a pleasure to read.

There are noticeable parallels with The Guernsey Literary... in the set-up, structure and some of the plot ingredients, which means that readers may be able to see pretty early on where some stories and characters are heading, but that was just fine by me, and Barrows has the integrity and intelligence not to tie everything up as neatly as you might expect. As well as being witty, charming and involving, it's a genuinely thoughtful book with important things to say about fulfilment, trust, integrity, and generosity of spirit.

My only complaint about this book is that, as a decades-long admirer of Eric Clapton, a central character called Layla meant that I have had a certain song in my head as an earworm for days and days now. I can live with it, though, and if you can, too, I can recommend this very warmly; I found it a delight.

Benjamin Black - The Black Eyed Blonde

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not Marlowe - not by a long way

I didn't get on with this book at all.  It's partly my own fault – I love Chandler so there was always a risk that someone else trying to revive Marlowe wouldn't suit me at all, but I admire John Banville and thought he might be the man to do it.  Sadly, he isn't

This is a decent enough detective story, but its narrator is simply not Marlowe.  Banville has a crack at reproducing the distinctive, laconic narrative style, but it's not right at all, I'm afraid.  Chandler was a truly great writer of English, in my view, and it would be unfair to criticise another writer for not reproducing his style exactly, but it seems to me that Banville hasn't let go sufficiently of his own style (which is excellent in its own way) to allow Marlowe to emerge in any sort of convincing form.  

Banville and Chandler are both masters of description but in very different ways.  For example, Banville's narrator in Ancient Light describes a character thus: "She really is of the most remarkable shape, and might have been assembled from a collection of cardboard boxes of varying sizes that were first left out in the rain and then piled soggily any old way one on top of another."  Marlowe's description of Moose Molloy, however, begins, "He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck."  They are two brilliant but wholly different styles.  It seems that Banville can't quite subordinate his style to Chandler's and the result is that Marlowe's dry, ironic voice is replaced by what reads like a pastiche of a deservedly forgotten 1950s English or Irish detective novel.

For example, very early on his client refuses to respond because Marlowe is looking out of the window.  He says, '"Don't mind me,' I said, 'I stand at this window a lot, contemplating the world and its ways."' Well, Marlowe would stand at the window in that way, but he would never, ever, use the hackneyed and clumsy phrase "contemplating the world and its ways" and there are dozens of other similar examples.  In just the next few pages he says  "…if you consider Buckingham Palace a modest little abode," "… I didn't think I should light up in this lofty glass edifice," and so on.  Little abode?  Light up?  Edifice?  Not from Marlowe.  And "I was bent on staying footloose and fancy free," is just stale cliché unworthy of Banville or Chandler, quite apart from being utterly un-Marlowe.  The tone is all wrong throughout, the snappy wit is replaced by plodding, clumsy irony and the voice – the absolutely vital element in Marlowe – doesn't ring true at all.  

I'm sorry to be so critical of an author whom I admire and of a book which, as a crime novel, isn't bad, but trying to make it a Marlowe novel was a grave mistake, I'm afraid.  To those of us who know and love Chandler's original books and have followed Marlowe as he scoops a drunk Terry Lennox off the sidewalk, causes Mr Lindsay Marriott to look as though he had swallowed a bee, throws Carmen Sternwood out of his bed and through a thousand other things, this simply won't do.  Readers who don't know Chandler might enjoy the book, but if you know the originals my advice is to leave this one well alone.

Gavin Extence - The Mirror World Of Melody Black

Rating: 5/5

Review: 
Another fine, enjoyable book from Gavin Extence

This is another very good book from Gavin Extence. Like the rest of the world, I loved The Universe vs. Alex Woods and tried this on the strength of it. I wasn't disappointed.

What follows may be a bit of a spoiler - so be warned - but it is fairly well-publicised and it would be impossible to give an idea of the book without it, I think. The story is narrated by Abby, a young freelance journalist who has bipolar disorder. We travel with her through her phases and see them all from within - and that is the principal story of the book, really.

It all sounds grim, worthy and turgid but is actually witty, involving and rather uplifting in many ways. Abby's voice is funny, honest, charming and utterly believable and through it her life and her behaviour and its consequences are superbly evoked, I think. She is a witty and engaging protagonist with whom I empathised strongly. The section in which she is in a manic phase had me utterly gripped and had my heart pounding, and I found the whole thing extremely engrossing and revealing while also making me laugh sometimes.

This is a rather different book from Alex Woods but I think it's no less good. I think this stands well with some of the first-rate books narrated by characters with mental health problems of varying kinds and severity. It is a warm, witty, honest, insightful and brave book which I can recommend warmly.

Natasha Solomons - Mr Rosenblum's List

 Rating: 5/5  

Review: A seriously delightful book

I thought this an excellent, immensely enjoyable book. It wasn't quite what I expected: from the publisher's description I thought it would be a gentle comedy of the conflict between the manners of the English middle-class in the 1950s and those of German Jewish refugees - something like George Mikes's How To be An Alien in the form of a novel. Well, there is some of that, certainly, but there is far more depth and subtle observation in the book, too.

Natasha Solomons writes in a straightforward, gentle way. The prose is a pleasure throughout and she writes of what she knows: of the place where she grew up and now lives, and of the heritage of her family. All of this makes the book an easy and very enjoyable read; she captures beautifully the Dorset countryside, the turn of the seasons and the people of that part of England. However, within this almost cosy setting and structure, this book has a great deal to say about some very important things - among them the meaning of belonging; the effect of evil forces destroying a person's family and most of what gives them the sense of who they are; the pain of exile and people's responses to it and - not least - the meaning of being English. Solomons also catches, with a lovely lightness of touch, much of the experience of exile - the tiny reminders of the past, the importance of food, the significance of names, the never quite feeling secure, and so on.

Jack and Sadie, refugees from the Nazis, respond quite differently to their situation. Jack, by means of the eponymous list, is determined to forget all about the past, to be relentlessly cheerful and to make himself into what he believes to be an Englishman. Sadie is concerned almost exclusively with her past and her terrible losses, and has no wish to be in the present or to be happy. Solomons doesn't spare them their faults but treats them with great compassion, so that I felt real sympathy for two initially rather unsympathetic characters. We see not only Jack's absurd and infuriating obsessiveness, but also his admirable indomitability and strength, and with Sadie not just her misery and determination to be unhappy but also the deep human importance of remembrance and connection to our roots. We are also reminded that her Dorset labouring men, although they do not join golf clubs or do many of the other things on Jack's list, are Englishmen - and among the best of Englishmen, at that.

All of this is done with a lovely delicate touch. Solomons doesn't labour points or lecture, so one is always carried along with the story. To give two examples: Jack gradually has to accept that in making his golf course he cannot just impose an imported plan but must work with the existing landscape, and this is gently mirrored in (but never explicitly compared with) his gradual abandonment of trying to make himself into something he patently is not. Also, there is a deeply poignant passage in which Sadie bakes many of the wonderful dishes of her childhood for the ladies of the Village Coronation Committee but does not feel confident to stay and eat her own food among them. This is made all the more poignant because Solomons doesn't beat you over the head with it - she describes it beautifully and then just leaves it with you. The book is full of such things - it's exemplary writing, I think.

Sorry to go on - there's a lot more I'd like to say but I'd better stop. This book is an easy and charming read but also has real substance, and it manages to be heart-warming without being fatuously sentimental. My sense of the book is perhaps encapsulated in a brief passage near the end which made me chuckle out loud at its beginning and at the end of which I had to stop reading for a minute or two because tears had dimmed my vision. It's a real gem, in my view, and wholeheartedly recommended.

Ali Smith - How To Be Both

Rating: 4/5    

Review:
A bit mixed but very good overall

Books which are written in an unconventional, experimental way are usually either brilliant or a load of unreadable nonsense. Frankly, I thought this had bits of both, but there was far more brilliance here. I enjoyed it a lot overall and there are some parts which will stay with me for a long time, I think.

As is well documented, the book's two halves are very different and it is a deliberate matter of chance which appears first in your edition. Mine began with the spirit of a female Renaissance artist slowly (and initially incomprehensibly) emerging into consciousness in the 21st Century and being somehow linked to a young woman who is looking at one of her paintings in a gallery, with the second half being the story of George, the young woman in question. The link emerges slowly and the stories themselves overlap only slightly, but they inform each other a great deal. It's a good idea, generally well done.

This is a book about a lot of things, including justice and feminism, friendship and really looking at what we see and how subjective our interpretation of it can be both in art and in the real world. Also, in George's story, there is a beautiful study of grief and bereavement with some genuinely moving moments. There is a finely evoked sense of the seemingly unending desolation of grief, and glimpses of the beginnings of healing with no nonsense about "closure." I thought this section was very good, and quite brilliant in parts.

I found Francesco the painter's section less successful, with a feeling that it got a little tricksy and self-regarding at times, especially early on, but it kept me reading, sometimes longer than I ought to have, which is always a good sign.

I'm not sure this is quite the wondrous masterpiece some have made it out to be, and I can understand why quite a lot of people absolutely hate it, but I enjoyed a lot of it and got a great deal out of it. I'm still there with the characters some of the time, and thinking about what the book has said to me so My advice is to give it a go, and persevere especially if you begin with Francesco. There's a lot of rewarding stuff here and I can recommend it.