I love Michael Cunningham but this new novel of his seemed bereft of inspiration to me, even a little lazy as if he didn't have the energy to challengI love Michael Cunningham but this new novel of his seemed bereft of inspiration to me, even a little lazy as if he didn't have the energy to challenge himself in any significant way. A dysfunctional family, an artist living in New York, a foray into social media role playing are all themes that have been done to death. Certainly the world doesn't need another New York artist. Why not a zookeeper or someone who monitors CCTV footage for a living? I doubt if there was anything in this entire novel he had to research. It's all very well writing about what you know but if what you know is already comprehensively known? There were some lovely passages of prose but as a novel it had little traction, little dramatic energy....more
I don't read many biographies. It's all the guesswork involved that puts me off. A novelist knows her characters heart and soul; a biographer doesn't.I don't read many biographies. It's all the guesswork involved that puts me off. A novelist knows her characters heart and soul; a biographer doesn't. This is a very well written book. Lucrezia Borgia was clearly a fascinating woman. More autonomous, less scandalous than I had thought. I enjoyed learning about the complex political divisions in Italy at the time and the Este family in Ferrara. At the end of the day though I'd have preferred to watch a television documentary about her. I wanted to see the places and paintings mentioned and it would have also been less time consuming. To some extent the TV documentary has replaced the written biography. ...more
I usually love Maggie O'Farrell but I was struggling with this for a long time. Perhaps because it's premised on a cliché - the female denied all her I usually love Maggie O'Farrell but I was struggling with this for a long time. Perhaps because it's premised on a cliché - the female denied all her gifts by rigid patriarchal scaffolding - it all seemed wholly predictable and a bit dull. There's a hackneyed scene where a male courtier can't bring himself to say the word menstruation and I couldn't help feeling this feminist joke has run its course. However, the novel does burst into life. It bursts into life when she stops writing about a fanciful idyllic childhood and the dark forces enter the plot. In fact the second half of the book was as brilliant as the first half was pedestrian. ...more
The next instalment of the story of Patrick Melrose. After learning about his childhood and his appalling father in the first book we now see him as aThe next instalment of the story of Patrick Melrose. After learning about his childhood and his appalling father in the first book we now see him as a married man. Though he makes a concerted effort to be a good father he's, not surprisingly, a pretty awful husband and soon falls prey to adultery and alcoholism. He's also constantly indulging a tendency towards self-pity which was the subject of a fair bit of the overwriting in this novel - extravagant firework displays commemorating unworthy emotional milestones. His mother has left the family house in France to a cult of new age happy clappers - no surprise that St Aubyn has nothing but scorn for these people and dishes out to them some of his most acerbic wit. The best character for me is the precocious youngest son, Thomas - one of the best portraits of a child I've ever read. On the whole tremendously engaging and sometimes very funny. 4+ stars....more
First thing to say, if you don't like unlikeable characters stay clear of this. The narrator of this novel is as unlikeable as they come. He's a misogFirst thing to say, if you don't like unlikeable characters stay clear of this. The narrator of this novel is as unlikeable as they come. He's a misogynist, delusional, self-righteous, self-absorbed, easily unmanned, neurotic, infantile, priggish and yet at the same time he can be piercingly wise. He's also wildly unreliable as the narrator of his own story. William Bradley is a bachelor with exalted aspirations to be a great writer. He'd rather write nothing than anything substandard. So he writes nothing. His friend Arnold is a prolific and successful novelist. He is scornful of his friend's literary achievements. At the beginning of the novel he receives a panicked phone call from Arnold who tells him he has killed his wife. He rushes to the house and finds Rachel, the wife, badly bruised and distraught. Not long afterwards he will share an amorous moment with Rachel. But soon he will fall in love with Arnold and Rachel's daughter. He's so in love with her that he vomits over her dress on their first date at the opera - one of the funniest literary moments of my year. This family provide him with the whole gamut of his imaginative life. Is it real life or is it fantasy?
To begin with one takes the narrator at his word. But, in degrees, his version of events becomes ever more difficult to believe. And as this shift occurs one begins to feel more sympathy for him. I guess at the end it doesn't matter much whether his story is true because he's offered us so much in the way of truth about human existence. It was spoilt a little for me by the postscripts of the other characters telling their conflicting versions of the truth, all of which were irritatingly opaque and overly misleading.
The most prominent idea I took from this book is that we can't help telling the truth about ourselves even when we lie. ...more
"He directed a heavy stream of water from the hose he held in his left hand onto the column of ants moving busily through the gravel at his feet. His "He directed a heavy stream of water from the hose he held in his left hand onto the column of ants moving busily through the gravel at his feet. His technique was well established: he would let the survivors struggle over the wet stones, and regain their dignity for a while, before bringing the thundering water down on them again." Thus are we introduced to David Melrose, one of the most hideous characters I've ever encountered in literature. He treats people, including his wife and son, with the same sadistic disdain. The first thing that struck me was simply how brilliantly St Aubyn writes. He's like an English John Updike, except the story he tells engaged my interest more than Updike ever has. Everything takes place on one day in the south of France. He has a lot to say about the manners of the English upper classes and none of it quite like any comedy of manners in the history of English literature. St Aubyn is much more damning. The spoilt ennui of his characters creates a devastating atmosphere of unkindness and cruelty. ...more
4.5 stars. Elizabeth Taylor can write a beautiful sentence. This novel is awash with beautiful writing. Essentially, it's a wise grown up take on roman4.5 stars. Elizabeth Taylor can write a beautiful sentence. This novel is awash with beautiful writing. Essentially, it's a wise grown up take on romantic love. As a young girl Harriet falls in love with the elusive and unreliable Vesey, an aspiring actor and soon to depart for Oxford. I liked the split Taylor creates here between the subjective and the objective. Vesey isn't objectively very attractive as anything but a passing crush but to Harriet he personifies everything that is missing from her uneventful rural existence. He will become a powerful idea opposing the practical and fearful choices she makes. Taylor does a great job of conjuring up all the sorcery of first love. Vesey now vanishes and Harriet marries Charles, an older businessman. The narrative skips forward two decades. Harriet has a teenage daughter when Vesey makes a reappearance in her life. Not surprisingly he hasn't made much of his life. But neither is Harriet exactly enthralled with her married life. The temptation now is to try to reconnect with the past and all its glamorous wishes. Elizabeth Taylor is tremendously wise about the compromises marriage involves and the enduring sorcery exerted on a woman by the one who got away. It's the middle-aged Harriet who plays a game of Hide and Seek with her younger self in this novel. Will she be able to find her and reconnect with her?
I'll definitely be reading more Elizabeth Taylor. And well done Virago yet again for resurrecting the reputation of a hugely talented female novelist. ...more
It took me longer to read this than any other Austen novel. It's a lot denser than her usual effortless breezy brilliance and it's also more nuanced aIt took me longer to read this than any other Austen novel. It's a lot denser than her usual effortless breezy brilliance and it's also more nuanced and a little darker. For the first time she creates a central female character who isn't likeable. Emma is smug, she's a snob and she's a classic control freak. She tends to disapprove of any coupling she herself hasn't helped bring about. She herself, devoted to her ailing and rather tiresome father, maintains she will never marry. The narrative creates lots of mischief around Emma's snobbery and smug complacency. There's a lot of crossed wires in this novel. It seems what most interests Austen is how misunderstanding can create thickets in which we get lost. A lot of the time people are talking at each other rather than with each other.
Every character has a fixed social position in the novel which determines prospects and at the end no one it has to be said has shifted much so it might appear Austen shares a little of Emma's snobbery.
I realised while reading this that one mark of a brilliant novel is that there comes a moment in the narrative when you are compelled to re-evaluate everything that has come before. This happens in Emma and it's when you realise you're in the hands of a masterful storyteller. If only modern romance novels possessed a smidgen of the artistry of Miss Austen....more
You know when a guilty man sets about justifying his behaviour, how he strives for big philosophical words and at the same time to bring all his charmYou know when a guilty man sets about justifying his behaviour, how he strives for big philosophical words and at the same time to bring all his charm to the fore to justify the petty thing he did? Well, this entire novel is a bit like that. It's about ten couples in suburban America in the 1960s. It's like a medieval banquet of sex, climaxing with the moral equivalent of gout. Apart from anything else it's all wildly implausible. A balding middle-aged man of average intelligence and no creative talent who feels a kind of contemptuous affection for his two young daughters somehow manages to seduce most of the wives of his friend set. We learn little about the motives of the women who succumb to this obnoxious man's insatiable appetite for sexual conquest. The men get all the best lines and all the volition in this novel. I was initially excited because of how well Updike writes (he also frequently overwrites) and how perceptive he can be about relationships but as a novel it drags on endlessly on the same repetitive beat. The denouement when the chastened hero watches his church burn down just felt naff as any kind of commentary on the feckless gratuitous behaviour of all the too many and often indistinguishable characters in this book. Only because of the quality of the writing does it merit three stars....more
Zennor in Darkness is about the effect WW1 has on a small rural community on the Cornish coast. At the heart of the novel is the relationship between Zennor in Darkness is about the effect WW1 has on a small rural community on the Cornish coast. At the heart of the novel is the relationship between two cousins, Clare and the shell-shocked John William. It deploys a lot of flashback to recreate their relationship as children.
I found it a rather uneven novel, brilliant and thoroughly engaging in parts but a little overly ambitious and even pretentious in others (it was Helen Dunmore's first novel).
DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda are characters in the story and though it was enjoyable reading about them their presence seemed rather gratuitous. We're told local residents are suspicious of them because Frieda is German but all the novel's characters , except one token nasty clergyman, are shown to be essentially good people so this hostility towards the Lawrences never has any dramatic representation in the novel. It's a bit of real history tacked on to a fictional story without much purpose. I thought Dunmore could have been less generous with some of her characters. If there's ignorant bigotry afoot show it, make it a force in the narrative. Instead she seemed intent on creating a romantically nostalgic vision of early 20th century pastoral life. What was most impressive was the writing itself which has made me eager to read her later work. ...more
If called upon to imagine a scenario in which the faith of the devoutly religious is put most severely to the test I would probably think of the Jews If called upon to imagine a scenario in which the faith of the devoutly religious is put most severely to the test I would probably think of the Jews in the Nazi death camps. What they experienced and witnessed is almost like science fiction in the unimaginable scope of its horror. Mary Doria Russell chooses the genre of science fiction to dramatize one human being's dark night of the soul and it's certainly the most imaginative account of a spiritual crisis I've ever read.
The Sparrow is about a Jesuit mission to the planet Rakhat. We learn early on that only one member of the crew survives and returns to Earth. This is Emilio who is mutilated and traumatised. The narrative alternates between the voyage and life on Rakhat and the Vatican interrogation of the surviving crew member. A lot of the success of this novel is due to the ingenious structure which cleverly builds tension and the big vivid and vibrant characters. I especially warmed to the two women - the earth mother, Anne and the damaged ice queen, Sofia. Sexual politics plays a big part in the novel's subplot. Sex is depicted as both a pinnacle of rewarded faith in life's beauty and wonder and the most base inhumane means of cruelty.
At times The Sparrow walks a tightrope over an abyss of absurdity but every time I thought the narrative might fall off it regained its balance. The most dangerous moment was when the author opts to take us inside the head of an alien. Earlier she had made fun of Star Trek and how the aliens always speak English. I wasn't entirely convinced taking us inside the head of an alien wasn't a similar kind of act of hubris nor was I convinced we needed this small part of the novel. Otherwise though I was gripped throughout.
After his wife’s death Glyn finds a photograph of her covertly holding the hand of her sister’s husband. What follows is a narrative investigating howAfter his wife’s death Glyn finds a photograph of her covertly holding the hand of her sister’s husband. What follows is a narrative investigating how fundamentally unknowable everyone is. Glyn confronts his wife’s sister with the photograph and all of a sudden various people who thought they had people boxed are compelled to revise their ideas. The four characters of this novel are brilliantly drawn, each one Lively brings vividly to life. And she’s so good at writing about relationships. It reminded me a little of Rosamund Lehman’s The Echoing Grove, also about sister rivalry. Lehman’s novel is essentially a beautiful written and cleverly structured romance whereas this goes deeper. However I prefer Lehman’s book. This rather fizzled out towards the end. There was a sense that what was proposed as an anarchic event simply caused a storm in a teacup. A solid rather than inspired novel. Moon Tiger remains my favourite of her novels by a long stretch. ...more
I’ve lavished praise on Penelope Lively in the past but I can’t think of anything positive to say about this. Anne is married to Don, an unimaginativeI’ve lavished praise on Penelope Lively in the past but I can’t think of anything positive to say about this. Anne is married to Don, an unimaginative man who likes to get his money’s worth. It’s a thoroughly bland marriage. I was more interested in this marriage than in anything else in this book but Lively skips over it as if it’s somehow normal for two people who barely have anything in common to live with each other for years on end. Maybe it’s an indication of how much things have changed that Lively seems to regard this kind of marriage as a normal state of affairs without need of commentary. When Anne’s father is diagnosed with dementia she discovers he has been giving money to a mysterious female every month. Turns out she is the daughter of a dead woman her father had a long standing affair with. Meanwhile Anne herself begins an affair with a neighbour of her father. There’s plenty of potential in such a ground plan. However, this is a novel that stumbles along without a purpose, like getting into a car without any destination in mind. Every relationship in this novel is almost unbelievably bland. The affair must be the blandest account of adultery I’ve ever read. And the focus is all over the place. For some reason we get an extensive account of Anne’s brother’s life – a bachelor who favours young girls over women. Eventually we will discover his life is no less bland than Anne’s. The upshot of the mysterious woman is bland as well. A supposedly pivotal moment in the novel is when Anne joins a committee to save from demolition the oldest building in her village. But Lively makes this building wholly unattractive so we have little concern for its survival. Finally she gives it some skeletons in the closet as if to further ram home the point that everything we idealise is a sham. This is a novel that seems to posit middle class mediocrity as the best we can hope for. Yuk is all I can say....more
There was both too much and not enough going on for me in this novel based on the true story of a Polish Jewish family under Nazi occupation. There weThere was both too much and not enough going on for me in this novel based on the true story of a Polish Jewish family under Nazi occupation. There were times when it resembled non-fiction more than a novel – something to do with the reportage nature of the prose, its aspiration to provide a constant overview of the war and its fidgety perspective. There are also so many characters that it was dizzying being swept from one to another. I never settled with any of them, never really got to know any of them intimately. Also, a lack of dramatic contrast in all the narratives. It became clear about half way through that each narrative, in terms of outcome, was going to follow an almost identical trajectory. I could tell how it was all going to end up (the title is a giveaway) which dissipated much of the dramatic tension. The other problem I had was with the lack of creativity in the prose. I want some imaginative zest and depth in writing. That’s a big reason I read novels. I don't want to be told the obvious - for example, that a knock on the door at three in the morning is terrifying. I want to be made to feel how terrifying it is. When a woman is giving birth I don’t want to be told she’s covered in sweat; I want that thrill of an author expressing in deftly chosen words a part of my experience I had been unable to articulate. The author’s first port of call for detail or emotional response was too often the obvious.
Also, it might be a true story but true stories don’t always tell the truth, especially the bigger truths. This family by comparison with what probably 99% of Polish Jewish families went through were indeed extraordinarily lucky. A new genre of heartwarming holocaust novels seems to be trending at the moment with an underlying implication that with ingenuity and courage and fortitude the Holocaust could be survived which is patently far from the truth. Personally, lest we forget or gloss over, I think we’d be better served by harrowing novels about the unlucky ones which don't have happy endings....more
You might say The Essex Serpent is about the strivings and fears of the child within. When we’re children we have no problem whatsoever believing thatYou might say The Essex Serpent is about the strivings and fears of the child within. When we’re children we have no problem whatsoever believing that a huge winged beast might live in the dark waters behind the marshlands if that’s what we’re told and what legend believes. And as children we’re always struggling to forge a bond with some companion we single out as being a kind of annunciation angel. Everyone in this novel possesses a restless heart. Everyone has a deep sea monster lurking beneath the surface of their thoughts.
The underlying premise of the novel is a conflict at the heart of the Victorian age – science vs superstition, free thinking vs prudishness. An Essex village is in uproar after some mysterious deaths of both animals and a man on the shores of the Blackwaters. Clearly the sea serpent, last seen in 1669, has returned. The village begins to wonder what it has done wrong to bring back the serpent. The two central characters and the novel’s thematic opponents, Will the parish rector and the recently widowed, scientifically motivated Cora meet in the mud at the water’s edge.
Virtually no character in this novel has their amorous feeling returned. Whether they are adults or children. Everyone is returned continually to imagination by obstacles. And too much imagination promotes hysteria, especially in the very young. Perry does a fabulous job not only of dramatizing the sea serpent as metaphor of sexual desire but also of sustaining the possibility of the monster actually appearing throughout the novel.
We tend to view the Victorians in much the same way we view our own parents – they’re more prudish than we are, more set in their ways, less adventurous. Sarah Perry debunks this idea. Her Victorians are no less imaginative, sexually bold, open to new ideas than we are; the implication being that we are no less prone to superstition, nighttime terrors and blind prejudice than they were. So though this is set in Victorian England it has an exuberant playful contemporary quality to it.
At the end of the day it doesn’t perhaps have any deep philosophical messages about life. But the quality and imaginative vitality of writing has that gift of making you see the familiar in an altered and illuminating light. I loved the vitality and mischief and haunting, loveable, modernised Dickensian characters and would definitely recommend it to all and sundry.
You could argue that the character at the heart of this novel is dangerously close to being a misogynistic cliché - the career woman who deep freezes You could argue that the character at the heart of this novel is dangerously close to being a misogynistic cliché - the career woman who deep freezes her feelings in order to succeed professionally. Fiona Maye is a High Court judge in her late fifties. At the beginning of the novel her husband, maddened by his wife’s sexual detachment, leaves to embark on an affair with a much younger woman.
It’s easy to forget every judge has a personal life and that her professional life will have repercussions on her private life and vice versa. On any given day, during any given case, who knows what private torments the judge is undergoing and which may easily affect her judgement? McEwan examines what happens when the closed door between the professional and private swings open.
The case she has to try after her husband’s defection involves a 17 year old boy who has leukemia and requires immediate treatment, but he has been brought up as a Jehovah’s Witness and the religion forbids the transfusion of blood. His family and the hospital are thus at loggerheads. To be honest there’s never much doubt on whose side Fiona will come out as McEwan, one of the most doggedly rational novelists out there, has a hard job concealing his scorn for Jehovah’s Witnesses despite protesting otherwise with a passage like this - "Religions, moral systems, her own included, were like peaks in a dense mountain range seen from a great distance, none obviously higher, more important, truer than another."
We all though love a good court drama and this was easily the most compelling part of the novel. However, once the court case is decided, the novel fell flat on its face for me. There’s very little, if any, lived life in this novel. The novel rarely comes alive as anything but a succession of ideas tailored together into a kind of fable. And everything that happens after the sentence felt wooden and forced. The subplot involving Fiona and her husband always seemed like an underpainting and never really acquired body. At times implausible – so much left unsaid that it was like watching two people with the sound turned off. It’s a short novel but even so it felt padded out with a lot of unnecessary detail. In fact the more I think about it, the more critical and disappointed I become. Poor show from the man who wrote Atonement.
Probably unfair of me to star this simply because I’m not the kind of reader it was written for. I don’t like novels that want to rush you through theProbably unfair of me to star this simply because I’m not the kind of reader it was written for. I don’t like novels that want to rush you through them to the end, to the point where you’re almost skim reading in your excitement to know what happens next. I prefer it when a novel is like a love letter – you savour every sentence while still feeling swept up in the excitement of reading on. That’s what a page turner is for me. I like a writer to walk me through the world she has created, not speed me through it in a fast car. I completely understand why many people love novels that almost demand to be read in one sitting and sacrifice every other consideration – including credibility and historical accuracy - to a “gripping” plot but they’re just not my thing.
I read this because I had a fabulous holiday in Italy where I read an excellent novel set in WWII Florence which swept me up into a world I didn’t want to leave. When I saw this was set in Italy during the war I thought it might provide a way of prolonging my holiday…
Playing with Fire aspires to be almost every genre under the sun – at least the genres that sell: historical fiction, YA, thriller, chick lit, romance – and might provide a fascinating case study of what nowadays constitutes a best-selling book. It felt a bit like a novel put together from market research. Just chuck in everything that’s trending.
Also you need a PhD in suspending disbelief to make it through all the implausible plot devices without objection, a qualification I discovered I don’t have. ...more