Last year (not so long ago!) I read Murnane’s Inland and was confronted with something unlike I’ve ever read before. In some ways, like Proust, and inLast year (not so long ago!) I read Murnane’s Inland and was confronted with something unlike I’ve ever read before. In some ways, like Proust, and in others, like Thomas Bernhard, but without the angst. Murnane’s prose is circular, repetitive, and in many ways, frustrating. I didn’t bother to rate it. But since then, I’ve been quietly obsessed with him, reading countless interviews, articles, reviews and profiles; I’m half convinced he’s destined for a Nobel Prize.
Invisible Yet Enduring Lilacs (perhaps the most beautiful title I’ve come across for some time, taken from Proust) is a collection of essays, mostly about the act of writing itself, and surprisingly personal. I studied writing for six years in formal education and would say most writing advice now bores me to tears, for I’ve heard it all before. “Show don’t tell” was battered over my head for half a decade. Murnane’s writing advice is unlike anything I’ve heard before. His ideas of fiction are inimitable: he is entirely concerned with fiction comprised of images; he speaks nothing of the usual mantras of characterisation, plot, arcs, tension, conflict or change. For example, he greatly admires words he read many years ago (in many of Murnane’s essays he mentions words or phrases that have stayed with him for many years, even whole poems and passages he knows verbatim) by Herbert Read, ‘Good writing exactly reproduces what we should call the contour of our thought.’ In a later essay, Murnane says himself, ‘I have sometimes thought of the whole enterprise of my fiction-writing as an effort to bring to light an underlying order – a vast pattern of connected images – beneath everything that I am able to call my mind.’
I can’t even describe the beauty and symmetry of the titular essay on Proust.
I’ll be reading more of Murnane’s fiction this year....more
A strong first half with "The Tower of Babylon" and "Story of Your Life" (my girlfriend and I then watched its adaption, the movie Arrival, which I enA strong first half with "The Tower of Babylon" and "Story of Your Life" (my girlfriend and I then watched its adaption, the movie Arrival, which I enjoyed in some ways; I thought certain changes were smart (not better, but smart for cinema), some bits were too dramatised and ruined the gentleness of the story, and some bits were heavy-handed), but the collection became a slog with "Seventy-Two Letters". Chiang's writing is fine, but the more I read the more I got bogged down in the plain, telling prose. His stories are filled with science jargon and I guess I'm not smart enough to appreciate it. Some of the stories lack any character or emotion and read like manuals. The idea behind "Hell is the Absence of God" was interesting, with people being wounded or healed by the visitation of angels from heaven, but by this point I had mentally checked-out. Worth it for the highlights. ...more
If you're lucky enough to live to 80 years old that gives you four-thousand weeks on planet earth.
Since finishing, I've reported this fact to numerouIf you're lucky enough to live to 80 years old that gives you four-thousand weeks on planet earth.
Since finishing, I've reported this fact to numerous people and discussed some of the ideas Burkeman explores in the book. For one, he tries to make a case for relief rather than fear. It doesn't entirely work. The platitudes by the end of the book (you can do what you want / the universe doesn't care) isn't so freeing as Burkeman imagines, at least not for me; but I'm grateful for this book, too. Alan recommended it to me in a hope (I think) to stave off some of the existential dread I've had the last few weeks after having a death in the family and sitting beside my first dead body. And life, the choices we make, what we do with our time, these are all topics of great contention. Indeed, this weekend I somehow ended up in a heated debate in a deserted French restaurant with an English friend of my mother's after bringing up this book (though not about the book itself).
(The original Latin word for 'decide', 'decidere', means 'to cut off', as in slicing away alternatives; it's a close cousin of words like 'homicide' and 'suicide'.) Any finite life — even the best one you could possibly imagine — is therefore a matter of ceaselessly waving goodbye to possibility.
Burkeman does call upon many philosophers and psychologists. The best investigation was his deconstruction of Heidegger's ideas that we are time, not limited by time. Being-towards-death, etc. '[T]here's no meaningful way to think of a person's existence except as a sequence of moments of time'.
The recent death in my family was not unexpected. Worse still, we were waiting for it. Days of sorting furniture and clearing a flat in preparation to hand it over to the next buyers. For the entire day I felt like Knausgaard clearing his father's place. (I realised once more the comfort of fiction!) So death came at last. We sat in the room talking about her, her life, but also sitting in a strange silence. As I read a scene in de Maupassant's Bel-Ami just last night: we were all waiting for her to make a noise, or sit up again. Eventually, it almost became a commonplace feature of the room, and we even laughed. Then suddenly someone would cry again, as if remembering. She was lucky enough to have more than four-thousand weeks.
So Burkeman reassures us (or tries): live with a little more abandon, enjoy your leisure and think of life as every passing moment rather than a succession of waits for the weekend. That is how time is frittered away. Time is not against us. It's not even with us. It is us....more
One of those books that feels impossible to give an arbitrary rating to. On the one hand, Kang has written an incredibly deft novel105th book of 2024.
One of those books that feels impossible to give an arbitrary rating to. On the one hand, Kang has written an incredibly deft novel about the Jeju Massacre in 1948, on the other, she has written an abstract novel that reads like sand falling through your fingers. Considering the novel's 400 page weight, there's not much to be said about where the pages go: a large swathe of the novel details the narrator waiting at a bus stop in a snowstorm, then walking through the snow, in the attempt to save her friend's budgie. The final hundred pages or so details the dreamlike investigation into her friend's family history and the Jeju Uprising. It is a book full of quiet but poignant images: a budgie hushing as soon as a cover is thrown over its cage, endless snowfall, shadows moving on walls, logs of wood painted black, a bus crawling through the snowstorm, missing fingers... These images all drift, like a snowstorm itself, and carry us through the incredibly weightless narrative. Like the movie in the novel that is planned but never made, the novel reads like an assortment of slides or images, hauntingly quiet, that flicker before your eyes. I can't say I 'liked' the book; I was unnerved by it, sometimes confused by it, but ultimately impressed by Kang's ability to write a novel about this diabolical historical event in a seemingly directionless and airy narrative. What persists in my mind most of all are the black logs standing in the snow, the shadows on the walls and the silencing of a bird.
Thank you to Penguin for the advance copy for review. We Do Not Part is published in English in the UK in February 2025....more
I just read Ørstavik's Love and went straight into this one. I'd never heard of her until I read her name in Knausgaard's sixth volu99th book of 2024.
I just read Ørstavik's Love and went straight into this one. I'd never heard of her until I read her name in Knausgaard's sixth volume, where they are photographed together at a book festival. Interestingly, I guess this a Karl Ove mention, in these very pages: 'Knaus describing you in Book Six'. Norwegians mentioning Norwegians. This is about a relationship with a younger man and I found it lesser to the aforementioned book of Ørstavik. Ironically, it explores love more overtly than Love: particularly how we experience love in our childhood affects our experiences of love in adulthood. Those who are victims of violence in childhood are more likely to be violent. It is about the love that is passed down, or the lack of love. It's meandering, plotless, like Love but considering less impressive. It reminds me of other books about affairs, like the recent Booker-winner Kairos, for example....more
Voted one of Norway's top ten books of the last twenty-five years, Love follows a mother and a son over a single night. Vibeke on he98th book of 2024.
Voted one of Norway's top ten books of the last twenty-five years, Love follows a mother and a son over a single night. Vibeke on her own journey, and little Jon on his. It is the eve of the latter's ninth birthday. Ørstavik has immense control over the narrative which hops from Vibeke to Jon, sometimes sentence by sentence, with little to no overture or indication. The reader must keep themselves orientated for Ørstavik does not waste time holding your hand. There is so much dread throughout the book, but it explores the unconditional love a child can have for their parent. Sometimes that love is misplaced. Technically impressive and poignant....more
I read an interview with Rooney the other day in the Bookseller (?) where she said that this book is a kind of homage to Joyce as sh88th book of 2024.
I read an interview with Rooney the other day in the Bookseller (?) where she said that this book is a kind of homage to Joyce as she was reading Ulysses when she first started it so the beats of the sentences, the stream-of-consciousness, it all sort of melted into her own work. Sadly, Rooney isn't Joyce (who is?) so I found the faux-Joyce prose off-putting, sometimes bad. Her sentences lacked rhythm. The thing about Joyce is he is so pleasing to read. The sentences run over each other. There's a whole music. In Finnegans Wake, sure, but even in Ulysses. There's a deep understanding of cadence you get from Joyce.
And considering this is her longest yet, the plot was extremely drawn out for the inevitable ending it has. At times it felt like Notting Hill or some other Hugh Grant film. Little coincidences, break-ups and make-ups. I'd actually say this felt like her most immature book yet, though so many reviews are saying the polar opposite, and that this book is Rooney's creative powers coming to a head. I disagree fairly strongly. I saw one headline that claimed this book proves she is the greatest living novelist, and that, I say, is absolute rubbish. (For the record, I was very moved by Beautiful World Where Are You, though I read it at a tricky time in life and it felt like the salve I needed; I am afraid (especially now!) to read it again - and probably won't.)
The characters are unlikeable, and fairly unoriginal. The autistic incel chess player and the rich narcissistic lawyer. Come on. Most of the book felt repetitive: the chapter structures seemed to be: couple talk about their age difference and how it won't work followed by a long drawn out sex scene. The following chapter concerns a different relationship with a large age gap. They then discuss how it won't work, but then have sex. Rinse and repeat.
Disappointing in style and substance. Lots of platitudes. Too many pages. ...more
3.5. Like when you read multiple books of any writer, the same themes start showing through. Reading any Fosse puts me straight bac86th book of 2024.
3.5. Like when you read multiple books of any writer, the same themes start showing through. Reading any Fosse puts me straight back into reading Septology; and if you've read A Shining, you've basically read this, too. Fosse deals with the same premise and ideas but from a slightly different angle. In that way, I knew from the get-go where we were headed. One thing that does keep me going back to Fosse is how unassuming his prose is. The simpleness, the repetitions, at times I want to throw it down and say, This isn't enjoyable to read, but it is enjoyable to read, somehow, it's addictive when you're in its grasp and after reading for an hour in the gardens by my workplace today, I walked back with a luminosity. I use this word because I've used it before in my reviews, perhaps even in a Fosse review. It's a true sensation (luminosity being the word I find most apt, or the closest word I've thought of (so far) to describe it) that strikes me when reading certain writers/books. It of course helps that it was a beautiful autumnal day today, too.
(I read this as one of Fitzcarraldo's newest publications (coming in November), but it hasn't made its way onto the edition choices yet, so this Dalkey Archive is standing in.)...more
3.5. Better than the quartet and Companion Piece. Full of all the usual Smithian wordplay and strange humour and outsiders, but now 83rd book of 2024.
3.5. Better than the quartet and Companion Piece. Full of all the usual Smithian wordplay and strange humour and outsiders, but now in the future. Brave new world. Brave old world. Bravo new world. Gliff has two pages of meanings, but you'll get to that. Horses are important too (and have 'feathers'!). Identity, gender, dystopia. More linear and 'accessible' than some of her other works in that she plays games but always lets us know the rules. I'm floating around 3 or 4 stars. Not that it really matters.
Rumour has it, after being shortlisted four times but not winning, Ali Smith has asked her publisher now not to submit Gliff for the 2025 Booker. I'm not sure if this is true. A shame if it is, it feels bitter and out of character. Or she's tired and wants to turn her back on big prizes, which is understandable. Oh, and thanks to Penguin for the advance copy. ...more
I finished this last week but around moving into a new flat and not having any Wi-Fi, I haven't had chance to sit down and write it.80th book of 2024.
I finished this last week but around moving into a new flat and not having any Wi-Fi, I haven't had chance to sit down and write it. I read it in the south of France, in the Pyrenees mountains, so I was in the perfect place for another mountainous book of 'restoration'. The book I read before this one was Mann's The Magic Mountain, which this book is riffing off. The basic premise is the same, but where Hans Castorp was a young engineer going into the Swiss mountains to visit his cousin, Mieczyslaw Wojnicz (Voy-nitch) is a young sewage infrastructure is heading up into the Silesian mountains for tuberculosis treatment. As the second title suggests, Tokarczuk is turning Mann on its head: this is a 'horror' story. It's not an overt horror, and if you've read Mann's novel, then you'll find much of this in the same vein. Long days of routine or else no routine and discussions on various subjects. Of course, being the size it is, Tokarczuk does not write discussions as long as Mann did. A lot of them centre around women and their roles in the world.
I won't spoil all the extra layers that Tokarczuk adds, or even tiptoe into the concept of the 'horror' story within the pages, but I will say she plays with gender, sexuality and the self, among other things. If you know anything about Mann's biography then these things align somewhat. There is even a flashback scene, in Wojnicz's school, concerning another male pupil and his pencil. Again, those who have read Mann, will know what this means. If you haven't read Mann, the book would still be enjoyable, I'm sure, but the references and nods to the former text would be lost on you. They are as small as the word 'horizontal' being used once or twice. Tokarczuk is great. I cannot wait to see what is next from her; she is a consistently good and interesting writer. Deserving of the Nobel, I think. ...more
Read for bookclub. Not the thing I'd pick up of my own volition. The first chapter was cute enough, almost like a children's book. T78th book of 2024.
Read for bookclub. Not the thing I'd pick up of my own volition. The first chapter was cute enough, almost like a children's book. The rest of the book was the same chapter, almost verbatim, but with the name of the client and the foodstuff swapped out. Bizarre.
I will say, however, that modern fiction is so often just market-orientated. A restaurant that allows you to revisit your memories, a Japanese bestseller. Another book that is out/nearly out is about a photographer who allows you to revisit your memories . . . It seems many Japanese writers are trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kawaguchi's books....more
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a hypocrite and a liar. Volume Six becomes a metafiction and turns My Struggle into an ouroboros. It details,85th book of 2024.
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a hypocrite and a liar. Volume Six becomes a metafiction and turns My Struggle into an ouroboros. It details, in part, the fallout surrounding the publication of the first few volumes. It also details Linda Boström Knausgaard’s mental breakdown, and includes a 500-page essay on ‘I-you-we-they-it’, otherwise exploring the dehumanisation of the Jews through a biography of Hitler’s early years, an analysis of Mein Kampf (he had to!), as well as Paul Celan, Holderlin, James Joyce, William Turner, Hermann Broch, Thomas Mann . . . among numerous other writers, artists, etc. It is the most demanding book. I started it two months ago, roundabout, left it for a month as I read The Magic Mountain then returned to it. Since Monday I’ve been ill, which is something that doesn’t happen often to me, so I’ve been miserable, perhaps insufferable for my girlfriend to be around me, but it has given me the opportunity to read some 400 pages and finish at long last. At the beginning of 2024 I finished Volume Two and now we are finished.
Alan and I have been discussing Knausgaard’s character throughout our journey, a journey which we embarked upon together. In Volume Three, Alan decided that Knausgaard must be telling the truth, or a lot of the truth, because his child self in that volume is so recognisable to his adult self. Too much so to be an invented self. In this volume, he starts complicating the whole matter. I think he does this on purpose. I mentally underlined many, many sentences and passages and thought to myself, Liar! Hypocrite! Knausgaard hates to be spoken about. Knausgaard criticises Kubizek, who wrote a book about being childhood friends with Hitler. So many years had passed by the time he wrote the book about him and young Hitler, so the conversations transcribed must be invented. Knausgaard baulks — no one remembers entire conversations from twenty years ago. And yet his own books are made of fully constructed and conversations from decades ago, sometimes more than twenty. In a way, certain elements reminded me of W.G. Sebald, who, like Knausgaard, sometimes seemed to be daring the reader. Go on, believe me. They seem to prove something and then in the same breath disprove it. The whole thing feels like a game or a trick. And yet, how addictive it is. I believe My Struggle is one of the great literary achievements of this century so far. I hardly doubt it for a second. For the past year, I have spoken about him to friends, colleagues, I have lived a life parallel to his. Knausgaard’s life has made me more aware and self-conscious of my own. I’ve started to think about myself in different contexts and ways. How am I perceived, and how do I perceive others? I’ve been more critical of myself: yes, I am at times selfish, miserable, more often than not, dour, melancholic. I joked in one volume, I forget which, that it was becoming uncomfortable how similar I am to Knausgaard, by my own perceptions. Knausgaard, in turn, seems, in this volume, to suggest he is very similar to Hitler. I joked further with Alan. I am partly German, Aryan, and once wanted to be an artist. Hitler and I even share the same birthday.
It’s no surprise that Knausgaard’s writing of Hitler is bold. He openly attacks the ‘definitive’ biography of Hitler by Kershaw, claiming it is biased and foolish. It’s biggest flaw, he says, is that it spins everything Hitler did as evil. Even as a sixteen year old boy. There is a passage from Kershaw he quotes that describes Hitler as being a lazy, selfish layabout. How he sits writing short stories, reading, visiting the theatre. Knausgaard asks us (dares us!) to swap the name Hitler for Rilke and see if we have the same opinions. So, Knausgaard spends his time defending young Hitler, who, at fourteen years old, sixteen years old, a child, was not evil. The biography, for this reason, was fascinating. A completely fresh look at Hitler, not as a monster, but as a regular boy, who was abused and had high aspirations. A budding artist. Not, we may think, so dissimilar to Knausgaard himself, who lived in fear of his own father and dreamed of being an artist. The essay however, at around 500 pages, was taxing. The volume would get 4-stars, but its 5-star is a reflection of the overall feeling, not only of the volume itself but its position, its stance and the way in which it concludes the series.
The beginning and ending are top-form Knausgaard. The mundane is exploded into something more. Something both genuine and profound. The act of putting your children to bed, making coffee in the morning, finding an hour to write. Once again the reader is invited into the private world of a family, to eavesdrop, observe. The whole thing works because it exploits the nosiness of human nature. As when I finished Proust, I put the book down and felt something like relief, yes, a kind of weightlessness, perhaps even unreality. I could feel the book, all six volumes, sinking into me, finding the places they will reside. Everything we read is in us, most of the time dormant, but part of our makeup. Alan and I decided we probably wouldn’t want to be friends with Knausgaard. But a pint? To sit down with a tall glass of lager and talk to him about this and that? That is hard to refuse. ...more
Within something like 14 pages, I messaged Alan and told him to read it. Hachemi starts this thin book with some great metafiction, 76th book of 2024.
Within something like 14 pages, I messaged Alan and told him to read it. Hachemi starts this thin book with some great metafiction, ideas on fiction/short stories, on "his" hate of Hemingway, for example, among other things. I was quoting every few lines.
Bolaño, for example - reading Bolaño being one of the unwritten commandments - declared that 'a short-story writer should be brave' and drive in headfirst. Piglia claimed his lifestyle defined his literary style. Augusto Monterroso urged young writers to 'make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.'
And further yet some advice taken from a number of writers,
I. A short-story writer should be brave. Drop everything and dive in headfirst.
II. Make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.
III. Remember that writing isn’t for cowards, but also that being brave isn’t the same as not feeling afraid; being brave is feeling afraid and sticking it out, taking charge, going all in.
IV. Don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve opened your eyes underwater, unless you’ve screamed underwater with your eyes wide open. Also, don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve burned your fingers, unless you’ve put them under the hot water tap and said, ‘Ahhh! This is much better than not getting burned at all.’
V. Be in love with your own life.
VI. What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you’ve been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.
VII. Try living abroad.
VIII. You’ve got to fuck a great many women / beautiful women / […] / drink more and more beer / […] attend the racetrack at least once.
IX. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.
X. People in a novel, not skilfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him.
The writers behind this advice – in strict disorder – are: Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, Roberto Bolaño, Charles Bukowski, Hernán Casciari, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Augusto Monterroso. (Exercise: draw a line between each author and his advice.)
Even the chapter titles are literary. Chapter IV is called 'A Chronicle of a Death Foretold' and Chapter VII is called 'Slaughterhouse-Five'.
But after Munir starts the 'story', we realise the book is about capitalism, exploitation (namely of animals for pleasure and money), veganism, and fiction itself, of course. I adored the first half and Hachemi's voice. I liked the rest of the book but not nearly as much. That said, I'm a fan, and will be following more of his translations when they hit the UK (presumably through Fitzcarraldo again, who also supply greedy me with Agustín Fernández Mallo translations). A love-letter to Latin American lit, Bolaño, who is named dropped often, as is Borges. At 114 pages, it's hard not to recommend it for what it's worth. Spanish-written fiction is overtaking Japanese lit as some of my favourite to read....more
I've been reading this for about three weeks, which is amazing as a book under 250 pages usually takes me 2-3 days. I felt, mostly, 77th book of 2024.
I've been reading this for about three weeks, which is amazing as a book under 250 pages usually takes me 2-3 days. I felt, mostly, apathetic about every story here. I like Enríquez, but I found most of these stories fairly similar in tone. At one point a character says a character's recent experience sounds like cheap horror flick and I thought the same about a few of the stories. I've got nothing against horror, but I just found these a bit corny at times. I liked the other collection of hers I've read well enough, so maybe I've been in the wrong mood for three weeks? Fans of her will probably enjoy this as it's much the same: demon children, lots of murder, ghosts, phantoms, etc., but this time with some strange disarming references too, like Game of Thrones quotes and talk of Funko bobbleheads. As always, thanks to Granta for sending me the ARC. ...more
Where The Children of Húrin, the “first” (the order doesn’t really matter) of the Great Tales, is a long, consistent novel about Túr71st book of 2024.
Where The Children of Húrin, the “first” (the order doesn’t really matter) of the Great Tales, is a long, consistent novel about Túrin Turambar, Beren and Lúthien is a tapestry of bits and pieces, some more incomplete than others, but collaboratively make a repetitive and multifaceted look at one such tale from The Silmarillion. There is a longish (100 pages or so) prose telling of the story which I guess you could call the main body of the text, then the next 200 pages are Christopher Tolkien’s attempts at structuring, organising, and making sense of his father’s versions and drafts of the story. Some in prose, some in poetry. The second largest, around 100 pages again, maybe, is the same story told again (with slight differences) in poetry. The drafts are early Tolkien work, where the Noldor are still called Gnomes and Morgoth has the same Melko/Melkor. I’d be tempted to say that without having read The Silmarillion, you’d find little enjoyment (perhaps even sense!) in this collaborative work.
Of course, if you’ve read The Lord of the Rings, you will have read Strider’s version of the story he tells the hobbits at Weathertop; he and Arwen are a sort of reflection of the story, after all.
The Sundering Seas between them lay, And yet at last they met once more, And long ago they passed away In the forest singing sorrowless.
In 1981, Christopher Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin to say he had a book totally 1,968 pages long. This book was, as he writes in the Preface, his attempt at ‘know[ing] how the whole conception did in reality evolve from the earliest origins . . .’ His father, in a famous 1951 letter, called this story the ‘chief of the stories of The Silmarillion'. I would be tempted to agree with him, for my rating here does not reflect my rating of the story itself but the content of this book. As JRRT rightly calls it: a ‘heroic-fairy-romance’, and thought it ‘beautiful and powerful’. After all, on his wife’s grave the name Lúthien appears, and on his own, Beren.
For those intrigued: be warned, most of the book is the story told again and again, sometimes in prose, sometimes in poetry, and with slight differences. Even Fingolfin’s stand against Morgoth appears in one such draft, with the wording very similar to how it appears in The Silmarillion. Though a little frustrating and tiring, reading all the drafts and rehashes, one can’t help but feel a deep respect for Christopher Tolkien and the love and respect he likewise poured into his father’s work.
Next up is The Fall of Gondolin, and then the Great Tales are done. I’ve finished a few of the random extra Middle-earth tales and poems, so I am drawing ever closer to the 12-volume History of Middle-earth, which I can’t decide whether I’m brave enough for....more
Disappointing. Not a complete failure at all, but one of my most anticipated reads of the year has fallen partly flat. Maybe nothing67th book of 2024.
Disappointing. Not a complete failure at all, but one of my most anticipated reads of the year has fallen partly flat. Maybe nothing Cusk writes from now on will hold a candle to the Outline Trilogy. The magnum opus has passed and now we are left with what follows. The echoes, so to speak; because the best part, "The Diver" echoes the trilogy: we have characters in a restaurant talking about their lives: art, parenthood, marriage, it could be a scene from the trilogy, but it's not quite. I've always loved the sharpness of Cusk's prose, and the emotion she generates through a sort of coldness. Although that remains the same here, it feels passionless. I've been trying to finish this since last night. I could have easily finished it on yesterday's commute, when I got home, this morning on my day off, this afternoon or even earlier this evening. I've looked at it guiltily a few times today, but haven't been compelled to pick it up. Ironically, as a novel of 'ideas' as it's being regarded, the ideas feel more forced and less poignant than their natural occurrences in the trilogy. I hate to keep comparing, but it's natural. It is better than Second Place, which was a dud, even forgettable. I do think Cusk is one of the top writers working today, and still think that, but this felt like she was trying too hard. That's the most unnerving thing to read, a good writer trying too hard. A character even talks about the nature of an artist not being 'seen' in an artwork, but I saw Cusk hiding behind all the curtains here. Even the bits in the "The Spy" that felt a little meta were distracting, because Cusk was like the little boy's face in the window in the final paintings observed in the novel. I could see her there, peeking in. A little too contrived....more
4.5. Following my reading of The Silmarillion (at last!), and being a long time Tolkien fan, I've finally decided to go about readin65th book of 2024.
4.5. Following my reading of The Silmarillion (at last!), and being a long time Tolkien fan, I've finally decided to go about reading most of his Middle-earth books, and perhaps even all his books. (Alan also half-dared me.) The Children of Húrin is a darker tale of Tolkien's, one that appears in The Silmarillion at roughly 30 pages length. Here, it has been expanded into 250. For one, having already read the shortened version, I enjoyed it as if reading it anew. The expansion did not feel gratuitous at all. I've already come to understand that some of the stories throughout Tolkien's work appear in different forms. I'll be reading Beren and Lúthien soon, for example, which I've already heard Aragorn tell (on Weathertop to the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings), and read in The Silmarillion, too. This doesn't bore me at all.
But back to The Children of Húrin: it involves plenty of anguish, murder, imprisonment, even incest. It is around the time of Morgoth, before Sauron, and therefore a fitting place to move into post-Silmarillion. I'm not overly concerned about my reading order. My mother read me The Hobbit when I was a boy and I've read The Lord of the Rings twice. From that point, I'm just following my inspirations (and whatever I can get a hold of also dictates my order). Generally, the Great Tales are my ambition for now, though I am reading some other Tolkien things, and just finished one of his small non-Middle-earth books, which I'll review shortly. For those who are lost post-LOTR, I think this is a pretty good place to go. It is written much like the trilogy, unlike the drier and more historical/Biblical prose of The Silmarillion. The first few chapters of this might be off-putting as Tolkien sets everything up, but once the story starts, it's enjoyable and readable to the end.
Túrin is a tragic figure and it reads like a Greek epic. As I've said, even knowing the story, I found the sad moments powerful, as if reading for the first time. Tolkien never slips too heavily into melodrama (one of his great talents), and when he does, it feels epic and classical rather than maudlin and pathetic. His knowledge of old texts is the foundation of Middle-earth and all its tales. I imagine this to be one of the better, more thrilling reads of the posthumous tales. ...more
I knew I was in for a good ride when Del Amo starts his book about an abusive father and son in a contemporary setting with a chapte64th book of 2024.
I knew I was in for a good ride when Del Amo starts his book about an abusive father and son in a contemporary setting with a chapter about early humans struggling to survive. His writing is incredibly vivid and, dare I say, almost cinematic. Once you get to the father, mother and son story, I suppose it is essentially 'plotless' in that they go to a dilapidated property, Les Roches, and we watch the slow spiralling of the father. He carries what Del Amo seems to diagnose as hereditary madness, violence, etc. It's also a fantastic look (through the boy) of man and nature, man vs nature. These are some of my favourite books to read, Butcher's Crossing, , The Old Man and the Sea, etc. [1]. Throughout the novel I was wondering what that first chapter about the pack of early humans had to do with the novel, other than, perhaps, aiding the semantics, and I'll leave it unsaid how/if Del Amo returns to it or addresses it again. In the end, it reminded me of other great books about son's struggling under the confusing wrath of their fathers. Most recently Knausgaard's descriptions of his father as tyrant. Then add natural descriptions such as these . . .
He becomes aware of the smell of the mountain, a pungent scent composed of rotting vegetation, barks, bracket fungi and mosses swollen with rainwater, of the invertebrate creatures that stealthily crawl beneath the ancient trunks and the powdery rocks of the riverbed.
Driving winds and floodwaters have deposited enough alluvium within the heart of these ruins for wild roses and elderflowers to take root, and even hazel and locust trees. Their trunks have cut a path through the rubble. They rise through the yawning roof, spreading their branches above, such that the village barns and the village itself look as though once, in a far-off time, they were inhabited by fantastical creatures who deliberately built these structures so that they would blend into the vegetation.
. . . And you've got something special.
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[1] As a side point, does anyone have any recommendations for women & nature / women vs nature? Of course the literary history is often man vs nature, but I'd be intrigued to discover some books about women in nature. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is Groff's newest underwhelming novel The Vaster Wilds. ...more
I went in with low expectations, because these 'lost' novels and posthumous books, you know what you're getting. It's something unfi60th book of 2024.
I went in with low expectations, because these 'lost' novels and posthumous books, you know what you're getting. It's something unfinished or rejected; you do not find Márquez's new book has been published and believe it'll usurp One Hundred Years of Solitude (because few books do, even outside of Márquez novels). But, all things considered, I enjoyed this novella. I read it in one sitting on my morning commute to work and though I haven't necessarily thought about it since, I did get absorbed in my reading of it. It could have been much worse. Though, that said, I'm glad I didn't buy it and just borrowed it from the library....more
Matthew Ted
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