Tag: fiction

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY by John Le Carre

I loved Le Carre’s most famous novel, THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, and so expected to enjoy this, his second-most-famous. Instead I was just confused. It just seemed like there were a lot of names and a lot of middle-aged men talking to each other sweatily. I think this is not the author’s fault, but mine, for reading it in tiny snippets while falling asleep over a long period.

I learnt later that the book is based on the real story of how Kim Philby, one of the most important people in MI5, was eventually unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1963. I was required to dive deep into the Wikipedia, where I was most enthralled to learn that he was turned to the Soviets while at Cambridge, and spent his whole early career attempting to get into MI5, solely for the purposes of being a traitor. Once he had fled to Moscow, he said his ‘purpose in life was to defeat imperialism.’ What a baller, bizarre statement! Can you imagine being so entranced by something in university that you would stick to it single-mindedly for the rest of your life, lying to every single person you know for decades? Can you imagine spending years sending people to their deaths for a ‘concept’? I can barely commit to a haircut!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith

Here is a book based on a hilarious idea for a title. I just love the fact that this title exists, but more than that, that someone decided to make a book of it, and more than that, that it became a best seller.

This is the first line:  “It is a truth universally recognized that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

And it goes on from there, cutting back and forth between the original and scenes of bloody violence. I read an interesting article with the contemporary author, who said it seemed to him obviously very adaptable to zombies, because it involved so much going about the countryside, and a whole platoon encamped nearby for no real reason. I had never thought of this, but it’s true, and I guess a great book contains multitudes.

Towards the end I just started skipping the zombie bits and enjoyed a re-read of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. It’s just extraordinarily, intimidatingly good, and funnier even than zombies.

OUT OF DARKNESS, SHINING LIGHT by Petina Gappah

A fantastically fun telling of the true story of the group of people who carried the corpse of David Livingstone from where he died, in today’s DRC, to the coast, a journey of 3,000 kilometres.

This group were those who had been travelling with him in his huge, and very bizarre search for the source of the Nile, guided by, of all things, the ancient Greek Herodotus. I mean I know Livingstone was parading around Africa but I did not know it was using an ancient Greek who had never been to Africa as a guidebook.

It is a quixotic choice to carry this body to the coast, and I don’t suppose anyone really knows why it was done. The story is told from that of two perspectives, real people who actually accompanied him. One is a Zanzibari cook, who annoys everyone by continually going on about Zanzibar. The other is a man who was abducted and sold into slavery as a teenager, liberated on the ocean by the British, dropped off in India where he was taken to school, before returning to Africa to do one of the weirdest roundtrips of all time.

It’s a charmingly written book, with both voices fully imagined and very enjoyable. What mostly inspired me about it though was how all these people, Livingstone included, were living lives so far outside the pale of what they were ever born to or was expected of them. What wild lives!

A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau

Here is a highly mysterious book told with four different voices. What it is about is hard to say: it’s I guess partly about losing your virginity, about about betraying your parents, and about a cow that is saved from drowning. In short, it all goes on. The best voice is the first one, where a thirteen year old girl is working on her book, the Anthology of Hates, which is all about all the people and things she hates. Brilliant.

Best of all was that this was an old library book, which has not been checked out since 1985. These kinds of old smelly books that have passed through many hands are my favourite.

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD by Barbara Comyns

Here is another book by wonderful Barbara Comyns, whose biography is a total inspiration.  It is all selling puppies and moving to Spain and renting flats and being a painter, and being a novelist is just by-the-by.  

WHO WAS CHANGED AND WHO WAS DEAD is quirky even by the standards of her other books, which are pretty damn quirky.  It begins mid-flood, with ducks paddling around the living room, “quacking their approval.”  Then one by one the townspeople start to go mad.  It is all down to some poisoned flour, but this is not the point. The point is the madness, and especially the freedom that is found in it.  It was deeply and weirdly enjoyable. 

SARAH THORNHILL by Kate Greville

I enjoyed Kate Greville’s THE SECRET RIVER so much that I had to go almost instantly to its sequel, SARAH THORNHILL.  The first one covered the life of a English convict transported to Australia, and the terrible things he did to build himself a life there.  The second one tells the story of his daughter, who has to deal with these terrible things.  

Sarah, the daughter, falls in love with a man, Jack, who is mixed race.  All is going well until her parents find out, and then they reveal SPOILER ALERT their part in the killing of ten Aborigines some twenty years before. Horrified, he leaves her.  Then she does a lot of suffering, both over being left and over guilt about what her parents did.  

I wanted to buy it, but I just didn’t.  The author seems to live in a moral universe where people are naturally going to be tortured over stuff done before they are born.  I would like to live in this moral universe, but the challenge is I just don’t think it exists.  I don’t think it exists today, and I definitely don’t think it existed for the Victorians, especially not in that context.  

That said, Greville is a banging writer and it’s a great book.  Perhaps it is a failure of my own cynicism that I was not able to enjoy it more.  

I’M A FAN by Sheena Patel

Here’s hair-rising story of a romantic obsession that includes such hilarious chapter headings as:

first of all i didn’t miss the red flags i looked at them and thought yeah that’s sexy

Here she is stalking someone:

(The woman) doesn’t pull her phone out of her pocket as she’s probably one of those technologically ethical mothers, but I bet she’s dying to scroll.

And when she visits a wealthy person’s home:

The scene is lit from one of the large windows opposite me, which lends the table this romantic Modern-meets-seventeenth century Dutch still life vibe and I think how the fuck do you know how to do this

But really it is mostly very sad. The obsession is so strong, and the object of it so undeserving, that it is basically self-harm. It then leads to a further, even worse obsession with one of his other girlfriends, and especially with her online persona. Eventually, it becomes a story that asks the question: what would it be like if Instagram finally did manage to totally take over your life? What if you actually did lose the battle against social media? It’s kind of hair-raising, because it seems all too possible

THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder

In this strange book, a bridge collapses in 18th century Peru.  The focus is on the lives of the five people who die,  which, according to the author is trying to answer the question: “Is there a direction and meaning in lives beyond the individual’s own will?”  

This is hardly a burning question, you don’t need a whole book, answer is clearly no.  

In any case it won the Pulitzer in 1929, showing people had some very different concerns back in the day.  That said, it does have some gorgeous bizarre writing. I know Thornton Wilder as the writer of the exceedingly sweet, very American, and rather wonderful play OUR TOWN.  Clearly I had no idea of the scope of his interests, because this one is a real wild ride through metaphysics, South America, twins, nuns, and smallpox ridden actresses.

THE CITY AND THE STARS by Arthur C Clarke

Here is a book set in the incredibly far future. I was not too sure on the plot, but the vision was interesting. It shows a city governed by a huge Central Computer that generates all their needs and keeps them all eternally young. This is what humans think is the only place left that humans live, but then the protagonist finds another settlement of humans, who have decided to accept mortality. This sounds like it is going to be an interesting discussion of the question of : would you like to live forever if you could? To me the answer is OF COURSE.

Anyway, that is not where the book goes, it goes into robot worms and stuff. But I still enjoyed it. And I loved learning about the life of Arthur C Clarke, who peaced out of the UK at forty to go live in Sri Lanka and scuba and be gay and write books.

IT ENDS WITH US by Colleen Hoover

I bought this book because it has a billion hashtags on TikTok. People like to be dismissive of it, because it is romance, and it is wildly popular with young women, and to be fair because main characters have names such as ‘Ryle Kincaid’ and ‘Atlas Corrigan.’

It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a neurosurgeon (LOL). It slowly emerges he struggles to control his temper and is violent. What is interesting is that he is presented very sympathetically, so you understand how hard it could be to leave.

What I found interesting is the story of the author, Hoover, who was living in a trailer when she started to self-publish her romances which then by word-of-mouth go on to be on the NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER? I mean SRSLY anything can happen.