Category: non fiction

FLY FISHING FOR SHARKS by Andrew Alexander

This book is an honest account of a young man’s battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder and with depression.

Andrew Alexander grew up in Zimbabwe, and was educated at various times in South Africa, so the story is largely set in these two countries. His symptoms first appear in high school when he develops an obssessive need to check some aspects of his homework. Various other obsessions emerge, most especially around HIV, which makes him fear infection from even the most unlikely objects, and around driving, when he begins to fear that he has unknowingly hurt someone with his car.

The stress of moving to Cape Town for university triggers a major episode, and he is finally able to tell his family and get some psychiatric help. OCD is not an easy disease to treat, and he does not seem to get the very best of medical assistance. He eventually feels well enough to move to the UK, but the stress of London is too much for him and triggers another episode. He eventually develops depression, along with his OCD, and attempts suicide twice.

The author’s breakdown occurs within the context of the breakdown of Zimbabwe, and thus the book is also an interesting window into a certain historical and political moment. As with most middle class Zimbabweans of his generation he has lived in at least three countries, and thus the book has an easy cosmopolitanism. It is also, despite its serious subject matter, often very funny. One feels very intimate with the author, who clearly has thought deeply about himself and his world, and is at pains to share his knowledge with you as honestly as he can. The path to self-knowledge is a long and painful one, whatever your mental health status, and Alexander has clearly gone a good deal further down it than most.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE by Jennifer Worth

This is a maudlin and poorly written book that makes an unexpectedly good point.

The book is intended to question the way western culture deals with imminent death. The author begins with an account of her grandfather’s death, which happened gently, and at home, and contrasts this with the deaths she frequently saw as a nurse. It is very common apparently for elderly people to end their lives in a great deal of pain, over an extended period, because doctors feel driven by a fear of litigation to extend life, even if only for a few days, by very painful, invasive procedures.

She gives many examples of elderly or terminally ill persons forced through many weeks or even months of great pain because their carers felt unable to simply let the person go gently. Unfortunately, we do not need many examples to understand her case; one or two would have been quite sufficient. As it is, the book degenerates into a rather sentimental, even morbid, succession of stories of people dying in horrible conditions. I’m not going to say I didn’t spend some of the book in tears, but this owes less to the quality of the writing than to the quality of this reader: I am a giant wimp.

I wish the book had involved more examination into how this state of affairs had developed, because where she briefly looks at this it becomes much more interesting. For example, there is some discussion of the fact that in long term care facilities, it is normal for dementia patients to have a feeding tube inserted into their stomachs. You might think this is because they cannot eat, but you’d be wrong. The tubes are inserted because it saves carers fifteen minutes for each patient – they do not have to spoon their food into their mouths, but can just pour it down the tube.

PERSONAL MBA by Josh Kaufman

This is an unusual entry for this blog. It is, according to the author, a distillation of the most important ideas to be learnt in an MBA.

The author clearly has a pretty big chip on his shoulder about MBA programmes, and in particular about their price. He froths at the mouth for some time in the introduction about how much debt you go into to attend one, and how little you learn. I suspect he may be right about this, though it seems pretty obvious to me that most people do not go to business school to learn about business so much as to make contacts and to have a prestigious institution’s name on their CV. And these are very valuable assets, probably much more important than actually knowing what you are doing.

So this book focuses on the secondary goal, which is actually learning about business. I found it a very good basic introduction to the main concepts in business: profits, costs, overheads, etc. It is very clearly aimed at those starting a small business, and has many excellent recommendations, including explaining how to predict when a business will begin to make a return on investment, and how to start from the most basic beginnings.

Fittingly, for a book about reading, I also learn how to appropriately commodify books and magazines. Apparently, while there are many value forms (production, leasing, etc), reading matter may be classified as ‘audience aggregators,’ that have value primarily because the attention of the audience you gain can be sold on at a profit. Take that, Proust, Shakespeare, et al!

It really makes you think. For example, it made me think: if only Herman Melville had had a copy of PERSONAL MBA while he was dying in poverty! How different the history of nineteenth century American letters!

LETTERS BETWEEN A FATHER AND SON by V.S Naipaul

I don’t know much about VS Naipaul, beyond his A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS, which is a wonderful novel. It’s set in Trinidad, and the book’s so good that ridiculously, I now feel whenever I hear about Trinidad that I have some kind of personal relationship with it.

LETTERS BETWEEN A FATHER AND SON is made up of correspondence between VS Naipaul, his father and his sister, written during the period after he left Trinidad for Oxford University. There is much discussion of the prosaic – money movements, sending socks, and so forth; but also much discussion about writing – the father has literary ambitions, and encourages his son endlessly; and many heart-to-hearts, especially at the end when ‘Pa’ dies unexpectedly.

There was a lot I could relate to in these letters. I also left a developing country for a developed one, and the attempt to reconcile these worlds, the apologies for not writing, the death of pets and passage of time were really quite touching.

I actually felt quite sorry for VS Naipaul, or Vidia, as his family call him. He seemed to me to struggling with some very serious mental colonisation. For example, hilariously, he is all ready for the beauty of an English autumn! Clearly, he has done a lot of reading Keats (here for his Ode on that season), and not a whole lot of waiting on an open platform for the 4.52 to Charing Cross.

He is entirely convinced that in escaping Trinidad he has made a great escape, from a place which is self-evidently less interesting and less worthy of notice than wonderful, wonderful England. And yet, at the same time, what is he constantly writing fiction about? That terrible, boring place, Trinidad. And he doesn’t seem to see any contradiction there.

A very sad strand in these letters is the desire of Vidia’s father to become an author. Vidia is very close to his father, and we learn a lot about this. Pa is hampered by a lack of time, as he has to work constantly to support his many children. (VS does not come off at all well in this respect, as he writes very pointedly to his mother after his father’s death, telling her to tell his younger sister to not to have too many children! As if his poor mother was having them all by herself, asexually, like an amoeba)

A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS is in fact apparently a version of the story of his father’s life, and I find it rather sad that that should be Naipaul’s masterpiece in the end. Immediately after Pa’s death, he writes to his sister, saying:

In a way I had always looked upon my life as a continuation of his – a continuation which, I hoped, would also be a fulfillment. It still is; but I have to abandon the idea of growing older in Pa’s company; and I have to get the strength to stand alone. I only wish I have half Pa’s bravery and fortitude.

Indeed it seems that for many A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS is the book on which his reputation rests. IN A FREE STATE I believe won the Booker (but let’s face it, that was also won by the wretched FINKLER QUESTION), and I don’t believe we need to know any more about the literary quality of that book than that large sections of it are set in ‘an unnamed African country.’ Because obviously all of Africa is pretty much the same.

Mr Naipaul, take a tip from Mr Marley: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds!

IT’S OUR TURN TO EAT by Michela Wrong

A friend kindly lent me this as I am moving to Kenya. It tells the true (as far as that’s possible) story of one John Githongo, who famously decided to blow the whistle on corruption in the Kenyan government.

Kenya used to be run by Daniel arap Moi, who presided over a fairly corrupt administration. (A contemporary joke was: l’etat, c’est moi). Eventually, he was voted out of power (and actually went – take a tip, ZANU), and replaced with Mwai Kibaki. Kibaki promised an end to the corruption, and hired John Githongo to head a special anti-graft unit. There was much hope throughout Kenya that a new dawn was genuinely on the horizon.

Githongo was a well-educated young man, a journalist who had worked for Transparency International, and he set to work with a will, believing that Kenya really could change. He uncovered a massive government scam, which became known as the Anglo-Leasing (or Anglo-Fleecing) scandal. He slowly realized however that neither President Kibaki, whom he had believed in so whole-heartedly, nor any of his ministers wanted the scandal uncovered, primarily because they were its’ main beneficiaries.

He taped incriminating conversations, and kept incriminating documents, and then in fear of his life fled to the UK, where he arrived on the doorstep of a journalist he barely knew asking for shelter. (Thus Michela Wrong our author enters the story). He eventually released his information, and while a huge scandal did unfold, very few heads rolled.

Wrong ties this to the growth of ethnic divisions in Kenya, pointing out that Moi was a Kalenjin, and his regime mainly assisted them, while the Kibaki regime, though it did preside over a growing economy, was perceived to mainly assist his people, the Kikuyu. John Githongo’s special crime was thought to lie particuarly in the fact that he was a Kikuyu, and thus ‘betrayed’ his own people. The book takes us up through the explosion of ethnic tensions that marked the last elections.

So, in some respects a very depressing story. Ms Wrong clearly finds it so, making much of how wasteful aid is, what a hopeless case most of Africa is, etc etc. Personally, I didn’t find it to be that way. The main point I think is that John Githongo did stand. And there were those who stood with him. As we see in North Africa at the moment (viva Benghazi, viva!) there has been an old way of doing things,and Africa is currently run by old people, familiar with these old ways. But I have hope: a new generation is coming. Perhaps it is just that it is a sunny morning, but look – Kibakis is one of these geriatrics, born 1931, Mugabe, 1924, Gbagbo 1945 – while John and all those with him are young.

Ms Wrong writes with a lovely clear lucid journalist’s voice, and has a lovely turn of phrase. She did get me down with her old-Africa-hand despair, and by her typical white British way of dismissing white Africans. But whatever, it was an interesting and informative book.

I only arrived in Nairobi yesterday, and on the way from the airport I already noticed one of the small businesses she mentioned. A good introduction.

IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote


Capote was inspired to write this book by a 300 word article in the New York Times, which began: “Holcomb, Kan., Nov. 15 [1959] (UPI) — A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged … There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.” (Thanks Salon)

He went down to Holcomb, with his childhood friend (bizarrely: Harper Lee) to interview people, and spent the next six years working on a detailed account of the crime. It is widely credited as the first non-fiction novel, and as more or less inventing the true crime genre. This genre is disgustingly large and healthy now, of course, so the book seems a good deal less radical and remarkable now than it did then.

It’s still however a gripping little story, with well drawn and compelling characters. What most appealed to me was the long sections of direct quotes. It was fascinating to see how ordinary people spoke in 1959. It’s sort of insanely quaint. They all sound like they’re in an Arthur Miller play all the time.

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.

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS by James Fenimore Cooper


Well, this one is a doozy. I am sorry I could not find you an electronic image of the cover of my edition. It shows the Native American fighting the British guy, and for some reason the wind is blowing up the former’s loin cloth so you can see his butt. Full on, dead centre, a big butt, in the middle of the cover. It is very strange. Very strange. What is that supposed to mean? Borderline gayness combined with borderline racism? Actually, possibly this is also a good strapline for this whole book.

Basically, there are these two British girls and this British guy who is protecting them. They are betrayed by their evil Indian guide(!), Magua. They are then saved by the good Indians(!), a young one (Uncas), his dad, and this other white guy (whose always going on about how he is a man ‘without a cross’) who has been totally absorbed into the Native American lifestyle (thus he has to tell us all the time about his lack of cross). I can see why they made this book into an action movie, because it is just action sequence after action sequence after action sequence, enlivened by a bit of romance and some stupid disguises.

I don’t know which is more racist in its portrayal, the evil Indians or the good Indians. At first I was thinking, wow, way to write to the stereotype; but then I read on the internet that I guess Cooper’s book was actually a huge part of what created the stereotype. Interesting. There’s lots of ‘savage’ this, and ‘uncivilized’ that. But on the other hand, when Uncas dies, his father is mostly comforted by the white guy (WITHOUT a cross, let’s emphasize) who says how they serve the same god and will run on the same paths on the happy hunting grounds, which is sweet. And I guess at the time Cooper wrote it, a lot of people thought he was too kind to the Native Americans, because he often writes in admiration of their fortitude, courage etc etc. So, obviously, let’s not judge him by our standards.

Let’s not even get into the women, because its a close run thing as to whether it’s more sexist than it is racist. And we are not judging him by our standards.

We’re fairly lucky I can even tell you this much about it, as I almost gave up on page 17. This guy is some WORDY. And we know I like wordy, but this was almost too wordy even for me. Check it out: “Receiving no reply to this extraordinary appeal, which, in truth, as it was delivered with the vigour of full and sonorous tones, merited some sort of notice, he who had thus sung forth the language of the holy book, turned to the silent figure to whom he had unwittingly addressed himself, and found a new and more powerful subject of admiration in the object that encountered his gaze.” Ye gods. I kept going, but I almost gave up again when instead of cooking he referred to “undergoing the culinary process.”

Onwards and upwards. (In which series of childrens books is this an important phrase, at least in the last book? Extra points if you know)

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON by Anthony Trollope

Yes, I’m on a massive Trollope kick. There’s no denying it. He’s just orderly. His world is rational. I LOVE it. I specifically saved this book for a long plane ride I had, and it was awesome. It’s just amazing how a book with a strong plot can erase an airport, annoying seat mate, etc etc. Not that I also didn’t watch 3 movies (Dear John – AVOID!, Remember Me – Robert Pattison and 9/11 – nuff said; and Green Zone – MOSTLY AVOID!) Anyway, in the small house at Allington lives a young lady called Lily Dale, apparently one of Trollope’s best loved heroines. Her cousin brings a young man Mr Crosbie down to stay, and the two fall in love. He asks her to marry him and she accepts.

This is usually where most Trollope novels end, but with this one our problems are only just beginning. Mr Crosbie is much admired at the Civil Service, where he works, and uses his small income to impress. He realises that if he gets married he’ll be trapped in a small house with babies and have hardly any income at all. A very modern worry really. So like two weeks later he asks this titled lady he’s known for some time to marry him instead. She also doesn’t have much money, but he thinks a titled connection will be good for his career, and he likes her well enough. She’s been on the market 14 years, so decides to cut her losses and accept.

Lily is made totally miserable by this desertion. Interestingly, so is Crosbie. He finds he has nothing in common with his new wife, and is expected to keep up a way of life way beyond his income. In addition, his social circle are not impressed with him for jilting Lily. He gets attacked at a train station by one John Eames, who is in love with Lily, and wants to avenge her. He asks Lily to marry him, and she refuses, saying she is married to Crosbie in her heart. Which is a bit bizarre.

What I loved about this book was the writing style (smooth as butter!), the dilemma of Crosbie (it was very interesting to see someone make personal calculations of that kind) and of course meeting people from the other novels in the series. It’s like coming across a different period in your life, quite unexpectedly, because I read some of these novels ages ago.

Last: did you know Trollope wrote every day for three hours, without fail? 250 words every 15 minutes, and he said he didn’t understand all the agonising and wall staring; it’s just discipline. He said he attributed his whole success in life to the discipline of early hours. Let’s put that in our lazy pipes and smoke it.

CIDER WITH ROSIE by Laurie Lee


This is an apparently quite famous memoir of a childhood spent in the Cotswolds immediately after the First World War. This guy is one of the youngest in a family of eight. His father has taken a job in town, and never comes to the country, simply sending money (and not exactly tons of it) to his wife to look after the children. Not all of them are hers; some are his from a previous marriage. But luckily for him he is not too bothered by any of them.

The book is quite poetic in style, and evokes quite beautifully the country life. It’s also quite interesting from a historic point of view. On the one hand, everyone seems very happy, in a sort of wasn’t village life wonderful kind of way, but then on the other hand people keep killing themselves. So that was weird.

Anyway, it was a good book I guess and has sold 6 million copies but it didn’t do much for me.