book review Archives -

BILLY BROWN I’LL TELL YOUR MOTHER by Bill Brown

This is an autobiographical tale of growing up in the years immediately after the second World War.

Some aspects of it are quite interesting: the aspirational nature of council housing (that really bends the mind, today); the sense of community; the fun to be had in bombed out houses. It’s also an engaging and pleasant read, and you find yourself caring for the characters, and believing in their world.

In general however I have to confess I found it a tiny bit cheesy. Apparently, immediately after the war, no one ever had any complex or contradictory feelings, and no arguments were ever serious.

I suspect that it is perhaps read and loved by people who remember that time, and in particular perhaps by those who like to tut tut about today.

FEAR OF FLYING by Erica Jong

This book tells the story of Isadora Wing, who while at a conference with her second husband, the psychologist Bennett, falls madly in love with another psychologist, Adrian. She is confused about her feelings for Bennett, but certainly knows that she is bored and unfulfilled sexually, so she decides to run away with Adrian.

She and Adrian drive around Europe drunkenly and pointlessly, and the novel begins to move back in time. We learn about Isadora’s past relationships, with special emphasis on all the sex she was or wasn’t having. Eventually left on her own in Paris, Isadora has a sort of crisis of confidence regarding her inability to be by her self. She decides in the end to go to London to find Bennett, but the suggestion is very much that the most important peace that she has made is with herself, more than with any man.

Apparently this book was a massive bestseller when it first appeared in 1973 (it has since sold 12.5 million copies in 27 languages), and spoke in particular to women, who rejoiced in its sexual frankness and open discussion of female freedom.

Frankly, this response puzzles me a bit. I was kind of like: what? She doesn’t want to get married. She wants to have a career. She likes to have sex. I don’t really see the big deal.

But I guess that shows that we have come a long way since 1973, and that a lot of women before me had to fight a very long hard road, for me to be able to read this book, and find it simply puzzling.

It reminded me quite a lot of Doris Lessing’s THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK, another book about a woman’s valiant struggle, that now seems to me unimpressive. It’s also similar to THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK in it’s interest in psychiatry, in recounting dreams in detail (NB Authors: this is always boring), and in banging on in great detail about periods, as if no one’s ever written about them before. Which, maybe nobody had.

With all the sex stuff it also reminded me of the other old friend of this blog, Henry Miller’s TROPIC OF CANCER, but let’s not hold that against it.

Anyway, I admired the book. It’s impressively honest, the style is informal and fun, and the story compelling. It’s also rich with quotable quotes:

“Women are their own worst enemies. And guilt is the main weapon of self-torture . . . Show me a woman who doesn’t feel guilty and I’ll show you a man.”

“Because that was how I so often felt about men. Their minds were helplessly befuddled, but their bodies were so nice. Their ideas were intolerable, but their penises were silky.”

“ . . . in some fashionable sell-out profession like advertising . . .”

“All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness.”

Martin Amis, on it’s release, called it “horrible and embarrassing.” That’s also very much in it’s favour.

FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen (contd)

The New York Times called FREEDOM “a masterpiece,” and I’ve seen it frequently referred to as the first great American novel of the 21st century. On the other hand, some critics think it’s not all that. I personally think it is all that.

I freaking LOVED this novel. As you could perhaps have predicted from my last post, written intemperately when I was only on page 38. Having now read all 561 pages, I’m here to report that FREEDOM is indeed a very fine novel. That it is also a bestseller goes some distance to restoring my faith in human nature that has been damaged previously in this blog by such painful episodes as PROMISES, PROMISES and THE REVERSAL.

FREEDOM tells the story of a marriage. It begins when Patty and Walter meet as undergraduates in Minnesota (Walter, I must point out, attends my undergrad Macalester). Patty is initially attracted to Walter’s best friend, the womanising musician Richard. She eventually marries Walter, as he is madly in love with her, and is a kind and caring man. They build a house in a neighbourhood on the up, have two children, and a relatively happy life. Patty struggles to understand her children as adolescents, is bored with staying at home, and has an affair with Richard. Walter becomes increasingly angry about what he perceives as the world’s descent into environmental cataclysm. Eventually the marriage crumbles. Patty has an unsatisfying relationship with Richard, Walter has a satisfying one with his young assistant, and then they get back together again.

This novel is wonderful in a number of ways.
1)It’s funny. See first post.
2)It’s accurate. For example, on a failing actress:

As if to compensate for her shortness, Abigail went long with her opening speech – two hours long – and allowed Patty to piece together a fairly complete picture of her life: the married man, now known exclusively as Dickhead, on whom she she’d wasted her best twelve years of marriageability, waiting for Dickhead’s kids to finish high school, so that he could leave his wife, which he’d then done, but for somebody younger than Abigail; the straight-man disdaining sort of gay men to whom she’d turned for more agreeable male companionship; the impressively large community of underemployed actors and playwrights and comics and performance artists of which she was clearly a valued and generous member; the circle of friends who circularly bought tickets to each other’s shows and fund-raisers, much of the money ultimately trickling down from sources such as Joyce’s checkbook; the life, neither glamorous nor outstanding but nevertheless admirable and essential to New York’s functioning, of the bohemian.

3)The man can manage a long sentences like there is no tomorrow. Or like he is a Victorian. See 2).
4)It covers an almost mindboggling amount of ground: cotemporary environmental issues, good and bad relationships, sibling rivalry, child-parent relationships, profiteering in the Iraq war, local governance, neighbourliness. It really is bizarrely both a domestic novel and a state-of-the-nation novel

The book comforted me by making me feel that life is long, and most people make a lot of mistakes in it.

I can conceivably see where you might find this book irritating: it is very much about middle class America. There is a big and slightly weird focus on sex as the ultimate determinant of a relationship, and on sibling rivalry as an explanation for all later relationships, which does seems a bit like someone might have had a bit too much therapy.

That said, I still thought it was wonderful.

THE FINKLER QUESTION by Howard Jacobson

This is probably the most insular book I have ever read in my life.

This was a proud title previously held by Antonia Fraser’s MUST YOU GO. While respecting that lady’s grief, I find her unbearably irritating: the endless annoying name dropping, made more annoying still by the cosy assumption that we all knew to whom the names referred. References to stupid restaurants made more irksome by an assumption that we all knew these stupid restaurants. In short, a book as if the whole world is London, and north west London at that. THE FINKLER QUESTION is absolutely a book in this maddening mould.

Essentially, it tells the story of one Julian Treslove, whose two best friends, Finkler and Libor have both recently been widowed, and who are both Jewish. After a dinner with these two, Treslove is mugged, and believes that the mugger says to him: “You Jules” or “You Ju” or “Your Jew”. Cue a lot of stupid contemporary literature word games, at the end of which Julian decides he must be Jewish, or wants to be Jewish. He starts living with a Jewish woman, and is absorbed into Jewish culture. The characters increasingly feel that anti-semitism is growing, and eventually Libor kills himself, Finkler decides he must defend Israel at last, and Julian has a breakdown. I get irritated just writing down the plot outline.

I’m going to go ahead and tell you that I thought this book was borderline racist. It’s been a long time since I read a book so obsessed with ethnicity, and I don’t approve of it AT ALL. Maybe it’s a Zimbabwean thing. I grew up fighting the good fight in post-Independence Zim very much against that very idea: that you are your ethnicity; that your relationships are or should be bound by your ethnicity; and that your ethnicity has deep importance. I guess I’m still the adolescent I was, because I still don’t approve of all this ethnic talk ONE BIT. As if being born Jewish or Gentile or black or white is some fundamental thing we all have to bow down to and be defined by on every level. Total crap.

Also, total self-absorption. He repeatedly says things like “You can divide the world into two halves: those that hate Jews and those that want to be Jewish.” REALLY? I think I’m pretty clear that there might just be a few people in Rwanda, say, who are too busy hating each other for their colour to hate them for their religion. And that’s true in many, many other countries. I seriously hadn’t even heard of the supposed ‘Jewish stereotypes’ he (repeatedly) refers to.

It was like talking a bath in someone’s navel. Revolting. This is particularly so because the book seems bizarrely unaware of the fact that some other ethnicities in London might also have a few teensy weensy little issues: like, what’s least safe walking down the street a) Arab b) Black c) Jewish. Yes, it’s not c). There’s much apparent debate about the Palestinian issue, which is in fact no debate at all.

Lastly, there are lots of unbelievable weak jokes. Eg: The Finkler Question, instead of The Jewish Question. Oh, the comedy. Oh, my sides ache. Perhaps weak jokes from a clever writer are supposed to charmingly irreverant, or post-modern. Or how about just weak.

Seriously, I can’t believe this piece of crap won the Booker. I almost gave up on this thing on page 102, and I am still bitter that I didn’t. That’s a few hours of my life I’ll be regretting on my death bed.

WHITE MAN’S BURDEN by William Easterly (Contd)

You thought I had forgotten this one! But I haven’t. It was bubbling away nicely on the back burner.

Easterly delivers a damning indictment of aid to the developing world. He points out that:
-most aid is not properly evaluated. There is virtually no high quality independent evaluation of most aid spending. No one really knows what projects are actually succeeding.
-most aid organisations have insanely large and vague missions (eg: end global poverty). So even if there was evaluation, it would be hard to know exactly what one was evaluating.
-because the missions are so grandiose, no one really expects any success
-most aid is driven by what the funders want, or on what looks good to the public in the rich world, not what the poor actually need
-too much money is spent on conference after report after paper after project, which gives an impression of activity to very little real effect.
-too much power is given to central planners with little realistic grasp of what can work, which Easterly believes can only be solved on a small scale, case-by-case basis

In short, he seems to be saying what many suspect: that the EMPORER HAS NO CLOTHES ON. Nothing much is being done, but at great expense.

I think a great deal of what he says is very accurate with regard to the pitfalls of aid. His solutions are however not all terribly convincing. Some ideas are excellent, and I don’t really understand why they are not already in place (eg. independent evaluation; aid workers staying based in one country, not moving around – I totally agree with that! etc). Some are rather more dubious. He bangs on about how there ought not be too much top down planning, but rather that the poor ought to be able to say what they want. This sounds very good, and I feel rather guilty opposing it, but let’s face it: sometimes what the poor want is to cut off little girls’ bits. Yes, alright that’s a bit flip. But my point is, if you don’t know germs are causing your baby’s diarrhoea, then how can you demand anti-bacterial soap?

Mr Easterly seems to have a somewhat naïve faith in the markets, with the idea that the poor, if allowed to function as consumers (which is apparently our natural state) would soon put themselves to rights. I found the whole book to be written with a staggeringly splendid degree of pre-credit crunch confidence.

One favourite part includes a long list of the IMF’s successes. Then he admits that elsewhere, the IMF has had ‘more mixed success.’ That’s one way to put it.

(His blog, if you are interested, and it is interesting, is here)

JOY IN THE MORNING by PG Wodehouse

I’ve been meaning to read some Wodehouse for ages, and this was it: JOY IN THE MORNING.

It is the fourth of Wodehouse’s eleven wildly popular Jeeves and Wooster stories. Bertie Wooster is a dim but wealthy gentleman living in London in the 1930s. Jeeves is his butler, who is very much the brains of the operation, and is constantly having to get Wooster out of what I can only describe as – this being a nineteen thirties comic novel – scrapes. In JOY IN THE MORNING, Bertie has to go down to Steeple Bumpleigh, the home of his terrifying aunt, to help his friend secure the hand of the girl he loves. There’s all sorts of hijinks (I use the word advisedly), involving explosions, fancy dress balls, boy scouts and drunken uncles, and eventually Jeeves saves the day.

In general, I love these establishment English Lit figures. This is no doubt because I have been so colonized mentally, and Bob Marley would be ashamed of me. Thus, I expected to love Wodehouse. I’m really sorry to say that this is not the case. It all seemed horribly overwritten – every sentence was crammed to the brim with ironic, slangy language; and the comic idea (idiot rich man, clever servant) seemed rather old hat. It might only seem old hat now of course, because Wodehouse was the milliner who first made this particular hat, and now we’ve seen it repeated over and over.

So perhaps while it does appear derivative, it is only derivative of itself. Whatever. I was bored.

As a side point, JOY IN THE MORNING alludes to Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Which I think is rather lovely. And interesingly, the title has actually been used for two other novels. You must just read the write-up for the 1950s one below, especially if you want to barf:

“In Brooklyn, New York, in 1927, Carl Brown and Annie McGairy meet and fall in love. Though only eighteen, Annie travels alone to the Midwestern university where Carl is studying law to marry him. Little did they know how difficult their first year of marriage would be, in a faraway place with little money and few friends. But Carl and Annie come to realize that the struggles and uncertainty of poverty and hardship can be overcome by the strength of a loving, loyal relationship. An unsentimental yet uplifting story, Joy in the Morning is a timeless and radiant novel of marriage and young love.”

Barf.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATOO by Stieg Larsson

Yes, this is the piece of crap I bought for 12 euros and read in 2 days because I was so desparate for some fiction. The protagonist is a journalist (as the author was) who reads a lot of murder mysteries (as I suspect the author of this murder mystery did) and has lots of beautiful women who want to have sex with him all the time (think not, if his picture on the backflap is anything to go by). I don’t know if you really need to know the plot, as I suspect you already know it, due to it being the plot of all these books. I’ll give you the highlights: loose cannon investigator blah blah serial killer blah blah it gets personal blah blah killer is one you least suspect. So it was pretty blah, BUT immensely page-turning. No denying it. I also enjoyed the way it was so thoroughly set in Sweden, so they were constantly eating foul fish dishes and putting on thick jumpers.

One thing that made me REALLY MAD was the inclusion of an entirely unecessary and very sadistic rape scene. I’ve had this before with other books, where you are reading along quite comfortably, and all of a sudden you are like: ah. I see this book was written by a man. And a certain kind of man, too. I don’t mean he is a sadistic rapist, but rather that he is clearly someone who comfortably participates in that strand of our culture that eroticises female pain. I’m not saying these sorts of scenes are never acceptable: of course they are, if they are central to the plot or important to the book’s theme. But it’s incredible how often they are just sort of chucked in there. And I think the reason they are is that they give the writer, and some of the readers, a distinct thrill. Nice. Really nice.

A brilliant example of this is some stupid book I read, the title of which I can’t remember. It’s set in post Civil War America, which I am sure was a dark time for many people – eg, recently empancipated black people, traumatised white soldiers, etc etc. You’d never know it from this book, which is pretty much one long rape scene, written with precisely detailed excitement. What’s incredible, is that this piece of nonsense won the Pulitzer. Honestly, these people ought to phone their moms to apologize.

THE END OF POVERTY by Jeffery Sachs

My title should perhaps also include: FOREWORD by Bono. Which, based on the cover, the publishers think is apparently as important a feature as the book itself. I didn’t bother with the it, though. Partly on principle. That principle being – Dude: how much contempt do the publishers have for us? They’re all like: these morons will be totally excited by two pages from a celebrity.

Anyway, Jeffery Sachs is a famous economist, who was given tenure at Harvard at 28 (a fact he is not at all embarrassed to highlight for us on about page 3). He believes, or claims to believe for the rhetorical joy of it, that poverty can be ended in our lifetime, and in this book attempts to explain how. Okay, I have to confess, I can’t tell you more about it right now, as I haven’t finished it yet. I took it camping with me, and it was all too much for me. I discovered, to my shame, that apparently I can’t live without fiction. Sweet, sweet, fiction. Which is how I ended up paying 12 euros for a piece of crap, which I did finish, in a shameful two days, which I’ll tell you about next.

ELEGY FOR EASTERLY by Petina Gappah

This collection of short stories won the Guardian First Book Award recently. One can’t help but feel proud of a Zimbabwean girl flying the flag high!

I actually read my first of her stories when it was in the Guardian in 2009. It was set in the Mabelreign OK, which was very weird, as that’s the supermarket that I grew up going to with my parents (every Saturday, without fail, same till, same packing guy, etc, etc, my parents are like that). On a side note, I’ve probably never interacted with a piece of art set specifically somewhere I know in my life before, so that was notable for me. It was a sweet and sad story about a meeting with an old teacher.

I enjoyed the book itself, especially “Something Nice From London”, about trying to get a body back from the UK, and “The Annexe Shuffle” about a UZ student who was briefly interned in a mental institution. I think Ms Gappah’s at her best when she’s writing about middle class life (perhaps because that’s the world she grew up in?) and a bit more unsteady when dealing with people outside that world. The class gap in Zim is truly immense.

I also thought there was something peculiarly and charmingly Zimbabwean about her light-hearted and cheerful handling of the country’s serious problems. I was once told by a theatre’s artistic director (who shall remain nameless) that a Zim project I was working on was ‘too cheerful.’ Apparently, for some, Zimbabwean stories must always be stories of misery. English people can laugh and be silly, but we Africans are all tragic figures apparently.

What nonsense. Zim couldn’t stagger on if Zimbabweans did not have a strange ability to keep their chins up (if only to stop the water closing over their heads . . .)

Petina Gappah’s blog is great too. Here it is.

THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET by Anthony Trollope

After SMALL HOUSE I decided I just couldn’t face life without Trollope, so the binge contined. This is the last of the series of six Barset novels. Now, I’m kind of sorry the series is over, but let’s face it: this isn’t Austen, who only wrote like 6 books total. This is Trollope, and this guy isn’t kidding. He wrote more words than any other English novellist. After this Barchester series, there’s the Palliser series, which some people tell me are even better, and then tons of individual novels. So I could read like mad without any fear of running out.

I could, but I’m not. I’m taking a break. I’m Trolloped out. All that order, and morality. Anyway, let’s talk about it real quick. This book focuses on a minor character who has appeared in previous books, Mr Crawley. He is a low paid curate with a wife and a ton of children, who he can sometimes barely feed. He cashes a cheque which it later emerges was lost by someone else. Mr Crawley can’t account for how he came by the cheque. Thus, he’s accused of theft (terrible for a clergyman) and has to face the magistrates. He suffers terribly, because he is a intelligent and dedicated man, but so bitter about how unlucky he’s been that he is a tiny bit bonkers. He refuses to take help, of any kind, which is VERY irritating for the reader. He even refuses to have a lawyer. Eventually, we find it was all a mix up and he is innocent. Which means his beautiful but poor daughter can accept her wealthy lover as a husband. (Trollope loves poor girls and rich boys getting together, I’m realising).

The person who reveals the mixup is Johnny, who we’ve met in previous novels. He is in love with Lily Dale, who refuses to marry him. It’s not clear, even to Lily, if she does this because she does not love him enough, or because she is still so scarred by being jilted (as she was in SMALL HOUSE). We also meet the man who jilted her, Crosbie, once again, and find he is suitably miserable. I thought for sure when Johnny and Lily came back in this book it was because Trollope was going to put us out of our misery and GET THEM TOGHETHER. Oh no. They just randomly DON’T GET TOGETHER. Goddamn 1400 pages later, they DON’T GET TOGETHER. What the hell?!! I am bitter.