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This novel tells the story of a man, Harold Silver, whose younger brother is more successful then he: he has an impressive job, a nice wife, two children, etc etc. Then Harold’s brother has some kind of mental break, and intentionally causes a car accident in which a family dies. He is hospitalised,and Harold steps in to look after his family. Harold ends up having an affair with the wife, and one night while he is having sex with her the brother comes back home and, finding them together, beats the wife to death with a lamp. Thereafter the brother is jailed, and Harold continues to look after his children.

This early phase of the book is deeply annoying, with Harold a typical late 20th century literary anti-hero, aimless, useless, and totally disassociated from his life or any feelings about it. Try this: “Something is missing. I feel like I’ve fallen into a space between spaces, like I don’t really exist – I’m always out of context. Searching for clarity, I visit my mother” I mean honestly. And no points for guessing that his relationship with his mother is empty and meaningless.

He gets involved with the internet in some unhealthy ways, and we learn that AM Holmes is very likely over 50. Here is her old lady analysis of the internet : “There is a world out there, so new, so random, and disassociated that it puts us all in danger. We talk online, we ‘friend’ each other when we don’t know who we are really talking to – we fuck strangers. We mistake almost anything for a relationship, a community of sorts, and yet, when we are without our familiar, in our communiaties, we are clueless, we short-circuit and immediately dive back into the digitized version . . .” In fact, let’s google her age right now.

Yup. She’s 51. No surprises there.

However, the story picks up after Harold starts looking after the kids. He develops a sort of strange family made up of various misfits who live in his brother’s community, and the story becomes something of a meditation on finding family where ever you are. There’s a rather embarrassing trip to South Africa where Harold decides that all the white people are racist, whereas his black waiter is ‘a magical experience'(!?!) but this does not detract from the general improvement to the novel which occurs in the last half, making a rather sweet and – thank god – plot driven conclusion to what could have been a dire book.

But seriously, you guys, Hilary Mantel blows my mind. I can’t believe this is her first novel. I can’t believe she wrote it IN HER TWENTIES. First of all, obviously, because it’s such a good novel, but second of all, and mostly, because it’s so impressively ambitious. It’s a densely researched account of the main figures of the French Revolution from childhood through to the their deaths on the scaffold. She is 22 and living in Botswana, and she’s like: I know, for my first book, I’ll write a Trollope length novel that will required five years of research about a period that is extremely well known by the establishment. Frankly, this woman has BALLS. Presumably she also had an independent source of income. I feel inspired/depressed.

The book follows those titans of A-level history, Robespierre, Danton and Desmoullins from their provincial childhoods onwards. Interestingly, all these mean went to high school together. This makes a sort of intuitive sense to me, because what they did was truly bonkers, and its often been my view that there is nothing for bringing out the bonkers in you like your high school friends. It’s hard I think to grasp now how profoundly the French Revolution really was a revolution. They went from a king, to no king; from God, to the ‘Supreme Being,’ of rationality, from a class system, to butchers and bakers in Versailles. They even declared the equality of women. It’s interesting to see the mechanics of how this happened – the sheer physical courage that was required – but it’s even more interesting to see the kind of intellectual courage that was needed, to rip history up and start again, relying pretty much entirely on a bunch of kids you knew in high school. Danton is the tough leader, Desmoullins the PR guy, and Robespierre the pure heart of Revolutionary righteousness.

The French Revolution is a classic tale of how those who live by the guillotine also die by it, and the collapse of the Revolution, and of the friendships at its core, is perhaps the most gripping part of this book. As the Revolution wore on, and ordinary peoples’ lives (as is traditional with revolutions) did not improve, the Revolution began to devour itself. Revolutionaries accused other revolutionaries of not being sufficiently revolutionary, and with a guillotine just outside the front door, and in constant use, it was all too easy to send them for the chop. A fevered atmosphere, like that of seventeenth century witch trails developed. Robespierre eventually sends Danton and Desmoullins to their deaths; he follows them shortly after. It’s sad and satisfying.

As always with Mantel, the greatest joy does not lie so much in the narrative as it does in the narrative voice. Here are some favourites:

On a woman who used to be terribly academic, married an older man, and is now having an affair: “She could only conclude that she had been serious-minded as a girl, and had grown steadily more inclined to frivolity as the years passed.”

The same woman, on physical attractiveness: “She knew that for many women beauty was a matter of effort, a great exercise of patience and ingenuity. It required cunning and dedication, a curious honesty and absence of vanity. So, if not precisely a virtue, it might be called a merit”

On the weather: “an ominous December day, when iron-coloured clouds, pot-bellied with snow, grazed among the city’s roofs and chimneys.”

And, to conclude, some wise words from the boys’ headmaster. Perhaps I should tape them to my laptop: ” ‘Try to learn this truth, Maximilien,’ Father Herivaux said: ‘most people are lazy, and will take you at your own valuation. Make sure the valuation you put on yourself is high.'”

THE DEATH OF THE ADVERSARY is frequently described as a ‘lost classic’ of twentieth century fiction. Forgotten by the world, it was re-discovered when a well known translator was digging around in a bargain bin in an Austrian bookstore, and came across it, thinking it was something else. Now, in my experience, anything that needs to be ‘rediscovered’ always sets off alarm bells. Why is it lost? Who lost it? Somehow no ones ever been able to lose HAMLET.

THE DEATH OF THE ADVERSARY is a lightly autobiographical tale about the rise of Hitler. It tells the story of young Jewish man whose life is increasingly circumscribed by the growth of Nazism. Deeply annoyingly, the author never actually mentions Hitler by name, but instead refers to him as the ‘adversary’ in an awkwardly ‘poetic’ manner throughout. During and immediately after reading this book, I sort of hated it. I didn’t know how the New York Times could call it a ‘masterpiece’ and Hans Kielson a ‘genius.’ Weirdly though, as time has gone past, I find sections of the book remain absolutely clear in my memory. I find myself occasionally thinking of scenes, or characters, and wondering what book they’re from, and then realising: oh yah, it’s that Adversary thing I hated.

There’s a scene in which the main character meets some strangers, and one of them tells a long story about how he was sent with a bunch of young Nazis to defile a Jewish cemetery. At the time, I was kind of annoyed by this chapter long digression from a character we’ll never meet again. Now though, I find that the whole cemetery episode stays with me, for it’s sad depiction of how hard it was for the young Nazis to actually bring themselves to poop on graves, and knock over childrens’ tombstones. I also recall the main character’s account of his parents’ attempts to prepare for the coming of the Nazis, which involved packing backpacks with chocolate bars and hand cream, with no real idea why they might need them, as if they might soon be going camping.

Frankly I’m oddly conflicted. I hated it at the time, but I like it in retrospect. Sort of the reverse of a bad breakup.

Regular readers of this blog may recall the period in which I was not sleeping, and so I took to my Sedaris. I started with a large print copy of WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES, which someone gave me, and then moved through all sorts of other Sedaris, from SANTALAND DIARIES to DRESS YOUR FAMILY IN CORDUROY AND DENIM. I decided recently to try LET’S EXPLORE DIABETES WITH OWLS, his latest, and OH DEAR. On my Kindle, if you go MENU – VIEW NOTES AND MARKS – the damning statement comes up: THERE ARE NO NOTES OR MARKS. David! What’s gone wrong! The master of the witty phrase and killing insight! Here’s what I think. His other stories were about his drug addicted, waster youth, and his messed up family. They were thus charming and comforting. Now, what does he have to write about? How he’s a best selling novelist? How he stays in chic hotels? How he has a stable relationship? I don’t think there’s any writer that could turn that kind of happy success into interesting material. However, I have hope. If he keeps writing like this he won’t be successful for too much longer . .

Christopher Isherwood is an English novelist who lived in Berlin as Hitler was coming to power, and these two novels capture that uncertain time. They tell the story of the various friends of one Christopher Isherwood, though he assures us that just because he has given his own name to the first person narrator “readers are certainly not entitled to assume that its pages are purely autobiographical” . Whatevs, Christopher Isherwood.

The “Christopher Isherwood” of the novels is struggling with his writing, and you can tell this in Christopher Isherwood’s novels. MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS is a rather dull story about a friend of the author’s who turns out to be a minor con man, while GOODBYE TO BERLIN is a lovely, acutely observed portrait of a lost world. It’s sort of frightening one person could have written them in a short period of time, showing how unreliable is inspiration, how unsteady talent.

Here is the description of a rich man: “ He was vague, wistful, a bit lost; dimly anxious to have a good time and uncertain how to set about getting it. He seemed never to be quite sure whether he was really enjoying himself, whether what we were doing was really fun. He had constantly to be reassured”

Or, on one of his friends whose boyfriend was leaving: “The afternoon he came to say goodbye there was a positively surgical atmosphere in the flat, as though Sally were undergoing a dangerous operation” This Sally is Sally Bowles by the way, as GOODBYE TO BERLIN is the basis of the musical CABARET.

Or, on a deer: “the roe went bucketing over the earth with wild rigid jerks, like a grand piano bewitched”

Or on an old woman “She sat on the edge of her bed with the photographs of her children and grandchildren on the table beside her, like prizes she had won”
Okay, I’ll stop there, but suffice to say I liked this novel.

Curiously, pre-war Berlin reminded me constantly of today’s Harare. I suppose this is not so surprising, as both places had faced catacylismic inflation, though as yet this has not resulted in the wholesale execution of minorities, at least in the latter. Just as street signs disappeared in Harare, to be used as coffin handles, the leather arm rests disappeared from German trains, as they were sold for leather, and people were to be found dressed in train upholstery. Christopher’s landlady recalls the days she would have “slapped the face” of anyone who suggested she scrub her own floors, which she now does happily, which reminds me of many a Zimbabwean reduced further than they ever thought possible. How awful is this: “The whole district is like that: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class”

And I don’t know if its just because I have taken 8 plane rides in the last fourteen days, but this part also struck a sad chord for me: “Where in another ten years, shall I be, myself? Certainly not here. How many seas and frontiers shall I have to cross to reach that distant day; how far shall I have to travel on foot, on horseback, by car, push-bike, aeroplane, steamer, train, lift, moving staircase and tram? How much money shall I need for that enormous journey? How much food must I gradually, wearily, consume on my way? How many shoes shall I wear out? How many thousands of cigarettes shall I smoke? . . .What an awful tasteless prospect!”

As you can see, it’s dark days here at WHITE WHALE. I’m trying not to panic, but I’VE LOST MY KINDLE. And I’ve been travelling a lot, so it could be in any one of three countries. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, except I’m stranded in the literary wasteland that is the Abuja Hilton. A sampling of my choices is in the picture here. Inspirational business books, introductory primers on weird subjects, vanity project histories of Nigeria.
I would almost start to consider the inspirational business books, but really: I have total contempt for people who read inspirational business books. It’s one of those things when glimpsed on someone’s lap on a plane, or on their bookcase, consigns them immediately to always being an acquaintance, never a friend. Thus, this current book. When that’s all that’s on offer, CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC starts to look pretty good.

And actually, it was okay. It was quite readable and entertaining, though clearly the author has very little respect for the reader’s intellect or attention span. It was also quite fun to read a novel set in 2000. People spend a lot of time calling each other on landlines, and very little time stalking each other on Facebook.

It did cost some 2500 Naira, which is about $15, and I whisked through it in two days of running on the treadmill. So now I’m back to square one and I still have to live through another five days. I don’t think I’ve been without access to reading material for that long in my entire adult life. I’m trying not to panic.

This is a book that is largely made up of fleeting poetic impressions, loosely grouped around a storyline. In other words, I wanted to kill someone while reading it: either myself or Tim Winton, I’m not sure which. Possibly both.

Because on the one hand, I feel bad. It is sometimes very elegantly and beautifully written, and I was sort of interested in the characters, and maybe I am just missing something, as other people seem to like it. On the other hand: OH MY GOD. Just say what you want to say. Not everything has to be shadowed by the strange and wonderful other realities. I can think of many bathroom trips I have made, that were singularly unshadowed. Also, it was rather in the modern vein, in that sorrow and futility were clearly very much on the menu, and speech marks were very much not.

I read to the end of the book, but there’s the bit where I gave up, about two-thirds of the way through the book, or at Location 2996 as my Kindle helpfully tells me: “She felt pity and misery and hatred and she knew this was how it would always be. . . What are we supposed to do? he said. I dunno, she said.

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD is the victim of its many imitators. It seems today rather cliché: the disillusioned government operative, the brown raincoat, the double (or perhaps it’s a triple) cross, the drinking, the idea that everybody loses: so far, so spy novel. This is a literary world very familiar to me, because my father was a great reader, and a great lover of a certain kind of dog-eared paperback, and I am a veteran of my father’s bookcases. As my parents always let me read just what I pleased, the alcoholic double agent alone in his Berlin apartment was a relatively major feature of my early internal life (no wonder I have problems).

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD only seems cliché today because it was so massively influential in its time. What it presented was shocking then: international affairs with no goodies and no baddies, and no victory possible. Today, this is the default position of virtually every high schooler; but at that time it was revolutionary, and the book has cast a long shadow over the spy novel ever since.

The story is focused on one Alec Leamas, who is a spy near the end of his career. The book does not quite reveal all to the reader, till right near the end, so I don’t want to spoil it for you; but essentially he accepts a mission which involves convincing the East Germans that he has been fired by MI5, and is now a disillusioned drunk ripe for turning. There a two wrinkles: one, that he actually is a disillusioned drunk ripe for turning, and two, that he falls in love. He travels to East Germany with his new communist handlers, and cross and double cross abound, drawing in his lady love, and ending in a sad non-victory on all sides.

The book is well written and keeps you guessing, and I enjoyed it. Here’s a sample: “The airport reminded Leamas of the war . . Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates amongst people who have been up since dawn – of superiority almost, derived from the common experience of having seen the night disappear and the morning come.”

Curiously however what I most enjoyed was the Afterword, in which Le Carre talked about the process of writing the book. He was a quite unknown staffer in the secret service at the time: “I had been poor too long, I was drinking a lot, I was beginning to doubt, in the deepest of ways, the wisdom of my choice of job. The familiar process of embracing an institution, then fighting my way clear of it, was taking over my relationship to my marriage and my work”

He was just thirty years old, and interestingly he rapped the book out in just six weeks, the dark world of the novel reflecting his dark internal state. The book was a massive success, and changed his life overnight: “My marriage broke up, I went through most of the withdrawal symptoms that fame instills in writers, even if they pretend it doesn’t. I found a new wise wife and put myself together . . .But of course I will never forget the time when a disgusting gesture of history coincided with some desperate mechanism inside myself, and in six weeks gave me the book that altered my life”

I found it all rather an interesting insight into how one bumbles into life change.

I am now way, way, behind on this blog. As a result, I must tell you now I will not be able to do YOUNG BLOOD by Sifiso Mzobe full justice, despite the fact that it is an interesting debut novel with a distinctive voice, as I read it months ago.

As I vaguely recall, YOUNG BLOOD follows the story of a young man in Durban’s townships, who, failing at school, allows himself to be drawn into the world of car theft. A initially innocent young soul, he is, in the fine tradition of such novels, very soon in way over his head, and learning moral lessons left right and centre.

The story is by turns boring (drink-sleep-do small time drugs) and terrifying (stealing cars, bribing police, etc); which is I suspect very much what it is like to be a small time car thief.

Much of the writing is quite charming; here is a sample: “The love affair between Mandrax fiends and housebreaking is age old. There is nothing more unreliable than a Mandrax fiend, except perhaps Durban December weather.”

This last part, about Durban weather, encapsulates much of the local charm of this book, which vividly captures a part of South African life that is not well documented. At the end, the central character is redeemed by returning to school, which twist I did not believe for a second; but this was still a worthwhile little book, about a small section of South African society.

You will observe that I am really losing the plot. Spy novels?!? When have I ever read spy novels? And wait, I even just read another one that I’ve haven’t blogged about yet (I’ll give you a clue, someone comes in from the cold). Anyway! Ian McEwan rather bravely decides to write an entire novel as a woman. Impressively, he more or less succeeds. It’s the 1960s, and some young woman is at Cambridge. She has an affair with her elderly professor, and he suggests her for MI5. She is a hesitant and unwilling spy, which is a good thing, because once she passes the rigorous interview process she finds that woman are only allowed to be secretaries anyway. One really forget how much we today owe to our mother’s generation. Eventually she is assigned to liaise with a writer, who the service feels is likely to write the right sort of books. The plan is to give him money, without him being aware where it comes from, so as to encourage writing of his kind, which they believe will foster the right kind of thinking – anti-communist, pro-western values, etc etc. Here is where it gets interesting, because unfortunately she falls madly in love with this writer, and so not telling him who is paying the bills becomes more and more complicated. Eventually he finds out, and a weird sort of double bluff begins, which ends the book with an unexpected twist.

The young woman at the centre of the book is chosen for this project with the writer because she is an enthusiastic reader, and this book is very interesting on the subject of reading as a defining activity. It made me realise I have read many books on what it means to be a writer, but very few on what it means to be a reader. Here’s the woman on he reading: “I could take a block of text or a whole paragraph in one visual gulp. It was a matter of letter my eyes and thoughts go soft, like wax, to take the impression fresh off the page. To the irritation of those around me, I’d turn a page every few seconds with an impatient snap of the wrist. My needs were simple. I didn’t bother much with themes or felicitous phrases and skipped fine descriptions of weather, landscapes and interiors. I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what was to happen to them.” This struck me, because it is pretty much exactly how I read. I’ve never understood people who think about what they read; the idea is to not have your own thoughts, but someone else’s.