Tag: USA

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.

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.

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.

THE TWO KINDS OF DECAY by Sarah Manguso

A fine memoir about a rare illness. The author has an autoimmune disease which begins by paralyzing your feet and slowly moves up your body, killing you if it gets to your diaphragm (so you can’t breath). As treatment she has all the blood in her body replaced every other day (!!!). This goes on at various periods for years, until she goes to a new doctor who prescribes her massive doses of steroids. This stops the problem but gives her profound depression.

It’s a pretty horrifying story, especially as it begins pretty randomly, with a head cold, in her early 20s, and then dominates the next ten years of her life. What I particularly enjoyed was the fact that she avoided giving it a clean ‘narrative’ – she writes it to us sort of in bits, as she remembers it, which I found very affecting. It was less factually true but seemed closer somehow to how real experience is.

RIDDLEY WALKER by Russell Hoban

Here is a novel of the post-apocalypse. It is all written in a strange made-up mashed up language, like language might be thousands of years and a few nuclear bombs into the future. It is extraordinarily believable and clever, also very annoying. A sample:

If the way is diffrent the end is diffrent. Becaws the end aint nothing only part of the way its jus that part of the way where you come to a stop. The end cud be any part of the way its in every step of the way thats why you bes go ballsy

I couldn’t finish it. As a younger, more eager person I probably could have. I can’t figure out if that is my loss or my gain.

EAT PRAY LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t know why this bestseller has such a terrible reputation. I quite enjoyed it. It is a memoir of a woman whose marriage, and then affair that ended that marriage, both explode spectacularly. She decides to heal herself by going on a year long holiday. What is really impressive about this is she sells a book proposal about this and so funds it upfront.

It is maybe a little obvious that this book was written off the back of a book proposal, and not one for a very sophisticated audience. She plans to travel to three countries: Italy, to explore pleasure: India, to explore religion; and Indonesia to explore balance (?). I’m amazed in 2006 someone could with a straight-face describe whole countries as representing things, but here we are, and it was a bestseller. Let us just be grateful she did not get around to Africa.

I was very interested by her time in the Indian ashram, and her sincere attempts to meditate for hours every day. I try for ten minutes and that is tough enough. I liked this as an explanation of silent retreats:

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendance emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I’m a failure . . . I’m lonely . . . I’m a failure . . I’m lonely . . ) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.

Now I just need to find a way to fund my holidays with book proposals.

MY FATHER’S DIET by Adrian Nathan West

I bought this book because Andrew Martin (whose book EARLY WORK I adore) recommended it. I can see why he likes it. I liked it too. But I can’t say I really understand it.

It is written from the perspective of a college aged man, who tells us about his father’s efforts, after a divorce, to win a bodybuilding competition. That’s it: that’s what it’s about. A really detailed account of watching his fat, 55 year old father engage in this probably impossible undertaking.

Some readers might think the father a sort of pathetic figure (and indeed the Guardian review thinks this book is about failure), but I did not. I rather admired him. At least he was out there, taking the big swings. The son, on the other hand, mostly sits in his room and tries to skate through college doing the least work possible. He’s a classic narrator of the modern novel, directionless and annoying. Go to therapy already! Or become a drug addict. Enter a body building competition.

I did really admire the super careful use of language in this book. It must have taken huge work. There were many moments when I stopped to admire the specificity of the writing. One time he mentions ‘a procession of eighteen wheelers entering and exiting the pale radiance of a service station.’ Pale radiance! I love it

EILEEN by Otessa Moshfegh

It is often a mistake to read a second book by an author you enjoy, because you start to be able to see their tricks. Such is the case with EILEEN. I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed her deeply unpleasant female narrator, but I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t just read MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION, which has the same ingredients but done better.

But who cares, I guess. As long as something is still fun. Most of this book is about the many ways the main character is unhappy, and how much she makes it worse for herself. Eventually, she makes a friend at work. This sounds like a positive development but in fact it ends in murder.

One thing I did not especially like was the inclusion of child abuse. Not that this can never be written about, of course it can, but in this case it seemed to me a little too much of a plot device – as if it was included just to ramp up the tension – which I did not think was needed, or earned. Eileen was capable of murder without anywhere near that much motivation.

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD by Richard Yates

I always heard this book was about an unhappy marriage. In reality, it’s about the importance of legal abortion. It tells the story of a young man in 1950s America of whom everyone expects great things, himself included. He is not too sure what these things are, and certainly doesn’t work on anything in particular, and so ends up long-term in an office job he started as a stop gap. So far, this is pretty much the story of 50% of humanity.

In this case it gets really out of hand because his girlfriend gets pregnant. She wants to abort but he makes a big production about it so she doesn’t. They move to the suburbs, which they both regard as a sign of failure. Then she has another child. She tries to convince him to move to Europe, and begin the life they dreamed of (she will work while he becomes great). He is terrified at being given the chance to actually live the life he talks about so much, and so when she becomes pregnant again, and obviously wants to abort as that will end their plans, he talks her out of it again. They don’t move to Europe, their marriage implodes, and this poor woman tries to give herself an abortion at home. She dies. I can only say one more time: THANK YOU FEMINISM.

Side point, please enjoy this description, a warning to us all:

Howard Givings looked older than sixty seven. His whole adult life had been spent as a minor official of the seventh largest life insurance company in the world, and now in retirement it seemed that the years of office tedium had marked him as vividly as old seafaring men are marked by wind and sun.

THE RUIN OF ALL WITCHES by Malcolm Gaskill

This is a fantastically interesting recreation of a single witch trial in 1651. I am amazed the kind of records exist that enable this level of detailed understanding of individuals so long ago. The trial was of a married couple. The husband had a temper, and was always telling people how he would ‘get even’ with them. This was not smart in a time when people were living in tiny villages, barely scraping a living, and absolutely buck-wild about religion. Meanwhile his wife was exhausted with having babies, resentful of being asked to bring in the maize while also looking after the kids, and seems to have had some kind of breakdown. It all gets out of control from there. Horses buck, ghostly children walk, imaginary dogs appear, and a meat pudding splits in two (a clear sign, apparently).

What I got from this book is that you should 100% not worry at all about anything that you cannot see and touch. It is sobering to see how recognizable these people are, with their problems (e.g., I am sick of these kids), and how very sincerely they really did all believe in imaginary dogs. It makes me wonder what imaginary dogs I am worrying about.

Side bar: I also learnt how incredibly ballsy these early migrants were. The main woman got abandoned by her husband and walked twenty miles with no money to Bristol to get herself on a ship to the ‘new world.’ Can you imagine the courage.