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Here it is almost the end of June, and I've just realized that I never posted about what I read in May. So, better late than never, here's a catalog of the pages I turned. As usual, click through for short reviews.
Black Blizzard by Yoshihiro Tatsumi
The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters (Volume 4)
Her First American by Lore Segal
Miss Tamara, The Reader by Zoran Živković
The Library by Zoran Živković
The Forgotten Japanese by Tsuneichi Miyamoto
--David
I happened to notice that we blockheads have been at this for just over three years now.
Huzzah!
Some of the things we've posted about:
--David
David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns… is, among other things, a meticulous recreation of a place and time, viz, Japan around the year 1800, and its fragile contact with European nations. Which means that reading the book makes us, by contrast, aware of the present-day.
Today, in large parts of the world, institutionalized slavery has been eradicated. It is also much easier to be a woman, meaning to be both female and a human being with choices. And today we know so much more about the other: people and places that are not our own.
But in our greed—some things are constant—we still manage to objectify and demonize the other so as to exploit or invade in good conscience. In terms of how we think and act, Afghanistan 2010 and Nagasaki 1800 are contemporaneous.
It’s also still all too easy to ignore the other. In a recent post, I casually referred to the present Gulf of Mexico oil slick as the biggest in history. It may end up as that, but a story in The Observer belatedly points to a long and ongoing series of spills in Africa as—incredibly--many times worse in quantity and tragic consequences.
Much about our attitude to life has changed for the better in 200 years. And so much remains stubbornly and sadly the same.
--Julian
Tonight, with tears, I finished David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet. Now I want to go back and read it again, and to reread his previous novels.
It earned the tears.
But I suppose I have to wait to find out what happened to Jack Farthing until one of his later novels.
--Julian
It's 7PM close to the summer solstice, and the moon is bright and high in the daylight sky.
Yoshihiro Tatsumi was, when young, a fan of Mickey Spillane, the poor man's — the very poor man's — Raymond Chandler, and Spillane's fingerprints are all over "Black Blizzard," a page-turner in the best pulp style, published in 1956.
That's from my review of Black Blizzard
—David
Hartley, L.P.: Eustace and Hilda: A Trilogy (New York Review Books Classics)
This is a lovely novel (for the three works were collected after initially being published separately) and it is lovely largely for the delicacy with which Hartley gives us the lives of the siblings Eustace and Hilda. One is tempted to call Hartley's delicacy Jamesian, but his prose is never as convoluted. The novel is largely about class, and the difficulty people not born to that estate might have negotiating it (without, sometimes, realizing that they are are having difficulties). This sort of thing can be played as slapstick or tragedy, or even used by a lesser author to convey a "message," but Hartley never employs a cudgel. The upper-class folks, like those from less exalted circles, are nice people doing their best. Hartley is genuinely fond of all his characters: It is refreshing to read a book that has no villains.
Celestin, Ray: The Axeman
A novel about a serial killer in which Louis Armstrong is a character seemed a bit too precious. I finally succumbed, though, when I learned that the fourth novel in the quartet of which this is the first is set in Los Angeles, and is reputed to be a tour de force. The good news is that Satchmo (still "Lil Lewis" in this novel) is a minor, albeit well-done, character who doesn't distract from the other denizens of the novel's New Orleans, the well-executed plot, or the exquisite prose of author Ray Celestin. I'm looking forward to continuing through the quartet, each book of which takes place in a different city, each a stop in the migrations of the African diaspora in North America.
Adair, Gilbert: A Closed Book
I nearly closed this book (ahem) halfway through, but just a page or two after the halfway point the penny dropped. Once I got what Adair was doing he had me. One wishes Hitchcock was still around to make a film of this, though so much takes place on the page it wouldn't have been an easy translation.It's the story of a writer who is not only blind but eyeless and the amanuensis he hires to help him complete what he believes will be his last book. But maybe the helper is not only there to help. And maybe he's not the only one recording the writer's words.
Johnson, Joyce: Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir
This is a much better book about the Beat milieu than On the Road. I'm glad that Johnson never took Kerouac's advice that she shouldn't revise, and that her model as a writer was James (Henry) and not Jack. The memoir does lag a bit when she's recounting the year-and-a-half or so that she was involved with Kerouac. That's how profoundly uninteresting he is. That she never really calls him out for being the shit that he was says a lot for her maturity and balance. It may also speak to Kerouac's charisma: he does seem to have charmed a lot of people.
Kerouac, Jack: On the Road (Penguin Modern Classics)
The great mystery is why this mediocre book is so widely loved by so many people who should know better. The prose, for all Kerouac's blathering on about his technique, or lack thereof, is profoundly uninteresting. (It's telling that fans who quote from this book always quote the same line: "The only people that interest me . . . .") The "minor characters" as Joyce Johnson in her much better book of that title might have called them—women, Mexicans, Blacks, country people—are patronized, and for all the furious trips back and forth across the country, the novel is strangely static. A friend recently remarked that it really belongs in the YA section, but even there it would be outclassed. Beat poetry > Beat prose.
Sayers, Dorothy L.: Clouds of Witness: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries)
Two books in and Harriet Vane has yet to appear. I don't know if her appearance will make the books better or worse. I seem to dislike English jocular slightly less than I have in the past.
Doolittle, Hilda: Helen in Egypt: Poetry (New Directions Books)
Quality mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; Victorian novels; high modernist poetry and fiction: This is how my taste runs these days. H.D.'s anti-epic, Helen in Egypt, falls into the last category, and is profoundly satisfying for the way it draws us into the mysteries that Helen, in the poem, attempts to unravel. Among these conundrums: was she present at Troy, how did she end up in Egypt, why did Achilles attempt to strangle her when—maybe—they were already dead. H.D.'s imagism owes more to tanka than to Tennyson and is all the better for that. The language dances and sings without recourse to crude devices. It's worth a reread, another reread, and a deep-dive into the criticism. I'm glad I talked my graduate student into focusing on this.
Cherryh, C. J.: Inheritor (Foreigner series Book 3)
The third in the series satisfies, but as its ending is in no way conclusive it's not a surprise to find that the series goes on (and on and on). I'm not complaining. I'll probably continue, though not right away, mostly because the characters, even the non-human ones, are engaging. That I still can't really get a grasp of Atevi politics is not enough to deter me. I'm pretty sure the protagonist, through whose consciousness we experience this world, doesn't entirely get them either. (And yes, another cheesy cover.)
Nguyen, Viet Thanh: The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
This book came out in 2015. It’s sequel came out last year. I read a review that made me want to read that sequel, but figured I’d better read the first volume first. The result of doing so is that I probably won’t go on to read the sequel. The Sympathizer is okay, perceptive about life as a divided person and life in the Vietnamese refugee community, but somehow, at this late date, the perceptions don’t seem terribly fresh. I become increasingly convinced that contemporary literary fiction is just not for me.
Alice Oseman: Heartstopper
Volume 1 of a graphic novel about teens navigating love and sexuality in a British grammar school. It’s a delight, and evidence that, while democracy and the environment appear to be crumbling, we are also making leaps of empathy toward a future where, despite our differences, we can -- as Rodney King said and hoped for -- “all get along”. (****)
Evan S. Connell: Mrs Bridge
Set between the World Wars, written in the 1950s, a knowing, affectionate look back at the life and thoughts of a Kansas City country-club matron, mother and “office widow” (husband barely home), told through day-to-day vignettes. It reminded me quite a lot of my own childhood and upbringing (UK 1950s). (***)
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads
Midwest US, early 1970s. A middle-class family--pastor father, enabling mother, kids Clem, Becky, Perry, Judson--navigate the counterculture and the religious beliefs offered as guides to the chaos of life, then as now. Intriguingly labyrinthine construction; penetrating psychological analysis. Funny, empathetic, thought provoking, unpredictable, smoothly and simply readable, Crossroads is a thing of beauty. (*****)
William Trevor: The Collected Stories
Over 1000 pages of nearly 100 short stories about ordinary people written from the 1960s to 1980s and set almost without exception in contemporary times. Characters are drawn with realism and depth. Stories, equally realistic, hold the interest and frequently surprise. Many are set in rural Ireland and I don’t know if they show their age. The very few that include gay male characters exhibit stereotypes, thankfully outdated now but a reflection of their times.
I thank Elisabeth Strout for recommending Trevor, and indeed their work shares acuity, veracity, and extraordinary compassion. They are both gifted storytellers, and a great pleasure to read. (***)
Ann Patchett: The Dutch House
A story about an extraordinary house, a brother and sister’s relationship, and the vagaries of family life in postwar, middle-class America. Upon that skeleton, Patchett lays characters and story arcs of great verisimilitude. Gorgeously constructed, mostly engrossing, finally moving, this is a deeply satisfying read. (****)
Anne Tyler: Redhead by the Side of the Road
To me, this slight story of the day-to-day life of a middle-aged man in contemporary suburban US was as one-note and clunky as the main character. Either I missed out, or author not on form. (Great [and misleading] noir-ish title!) (*)
Kate Atkinson: Life After Life
A family lives through and between the World Wars. It’s a loving portrait of middle-class England, and it is pitch-perfect in capturing the arch, entitled, yet entirely benign banter of the middle classes before they found out in the 1960s that they were no longer unchallenged top dog. Most of all, this novel is an extraordinary tour-de-force of structure. It’s wise, wryly funny, and a great pleasure to read. Pleasure as in satisfaction rather than joy--the vivid recreation of the horror of both the WWII London Blitz and the fall of Berlin gives a sense of how it must be for some in Ukraine at this moment. (*****)
Lauren Groff: Matrix
An odd book. It’s a bildungsroman of a medieval woman of royal birth who is sent to a nunnery, but after that it gets contrary. It’s religious and agnostic; realistic and mystical; spiritual and carnal, historical and modern…. Most of all it’s feminist in a wonderfully eye-opening (to this male) way. I began the novel with no particular interest in the characters, but the author clearly loves them so much that she only wishes good for them. That unusual generosity entirely won me over. At the end, I moved the book off my lap so tears would not stain it. If I may be contrary as well, a three-star masterpiece. (***)
Oliver Burkeman: Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use it
I always enjoy Oliver Burkeman’s self-help suggestions, often eye-opening and helpful, always deftly delivered with humor. His latest book, purportedly about time management, is actually an examination of how to manage life as a human. It guides us through our mistaken beliefs about time and our relation to it, and the counter-productive thought patterns and actions we take as a result. It doesn’t stop there: Burkeman shines a light on the calm, creative, loving space that appears when we face the realities of human life. I am grateful for the many valuable insights, plus it’s an easy, fun read. File this one under “Practical Philosophy.” (*****)
Elizabeth Strout: Oh William!
New York: a recent widow relates her memories of a former husband as they discover family secrets in rural Maine. Just as you must master representational art to be able to make abstract, you must be a solid conventional writer to write as artlessly as the narrator of Oh William! It continues Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton and Anything is Possible, but can stand alone as well. It is most pleasurable for its razor-sharp psychological observation, and for the vulnerability of characters we can empathize with. A delight to read. (****)
Scanlan, Kathryn: The Dominant Animal: Stories
This is a book of super-short fiction. Of the 40 or so stories, most are less than two pages. Nothing in the writing here is beautiful or kind, but somehow I whizzed thought it all. Some stories leave out points that would have made them more accessible. What the heck happened? A lot of the stories end on a sudden whim of observation and leave one wanting to read more. Most of the stories focus on a negative experience with a male, with strange detail, and after finishing a story, I often wanted to take a hot shower to get clean. I did enjoy "Design for a Carpet" and "Mother's Teeth." (**)
Woodrell, Daniel: Woe to Live On: A Novel
Confederate soldiers on a journey to fight Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Woodrell's voice in this novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy's. Lots of brutal killing and torture and the story seems to float along on southern dialog and an internal monologue of fear by the speaker. There are moments of occasional humanity, but for the most part the plot is a thin gruel of spilt blood, wandering, waiting, and revenge. (***)
Munro, Alice: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
There are three standout stories in this very fine collection by Alice Munro. She has a real knack for creating a variety of believable characters. The title story was my favorite: two teenagers pull a sour trick resulting in a surprising ending. In the story "Queenie" we see a young woman scrambling to make her way in the world, using a bad marriage as a way to make some progress. The final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" veers off into occasional long-winded reflection, as one man struggles with the loss of his wife to Alzheimer's. Munro is a master story teller. (*****)
Waters, Sarah: Fingersmith
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith
Such a good story: the get rich scheme of a handsome scoundrel twists and turns into... Two women in the story are quite duped into role playing. A lot of playful sex is talked about, but not much happens in the way of happiness or fulfillment. As always, Waters is right on target with the voices and the atmosphere in this London area thriller. (*****)
Barry, Sebastian: The Temporary Gentleman: A Novel
What a sad story. This novel takes place on the Gold Coast in Africa, where an Irish soldier/engineer recounts his life growing up near Galway and Sligo. Back and forth we go between Ireland and Africa. Like an unseen shadow, in Ireland, what slays the characters in this novel is alcohol. Back in Africa, the memories of the homeland, and the attempt at living again are equally daunting foes. Excellent story telling. (****)
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Donna Tartt's second novel does not disappoint. The story of a young girl, Harriet, who seeks to revenge the death of her brother, Robin. The backdrop is a small town in Mississippi, and the goings on of 4 or 5 sisters, whose lives all changed with the murder of young Robin; hung from a tree. Harriet wants to solve the mystery. Who killed him? She gathers clues, and encounters the wrath of the local druggies. Quite a page-turner, and like Tartts' other two novels almost nothing is left out or glossed over. There were times in the novel where I felt her writing fell short; places where I couldn't actually see what was happening from the writing, as is the case when she encounters the villainous brother, Danny Ratliff on top of the water tower. The writing perspective seemed off (who was where and when?) as a battle ensued. But one is so caught up in the narrative we read on and on. Also, who is the little friend who is suggested in the title? Harriet? Hey? Robin? I don't think it is the best title she could have thought of for such a wonderful and awful story. (****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive, Again: A Novel
A wonderful sequel to an earlier collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge. Clearly, Strout is a masterful writer; each of the characters in her stories I can see clearly in my mind. These stories span Olive's life from middle-age to old-age, with thoughtfulness, kindness, reflection, and regret. In a general way of summing up, this collection tells us that life sends us problems that are most times not of our own making-- and that we do our best with what we have to work with, and what we think is best to do at the time. The prevalence of loneliness that comes with old age is a dominant theme in the later stories here. Read this book. (*****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive Kitteridge
It's been more than a few years since I first read this wonderful collection of stories. As a prelude to reading her next collection, Olive, Again, I read these stories again. Wonderful insight into a community in Crosby, Maine and how they encounter each other. Henry and Olive Kitteridge function as the main characters, and each story includes them if in even a small way. Prior to my second reading, my favorite story was The Piano Player, but this time I enjoyed Incoming Tide most. Her stories can veer into a local gossipy mode, yet there is always tension lurking in the next sentence. (*****)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star: A Novel
Edward Manners goes to Belgium to teach English to two boys who are getting below average marks in high school. When not teaching, he helps out at a museum focused on a Jewish painter who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. Manners falls in love with one of his students, and a lively adventure ensues as Manners undertakes to seduce him. The narrative is fun, at times cynical of gay life, and there is a lot of sex. One also learns a good deal of personal history of growing up in post-war England and Belgium. Hollinghurst is a brilliant writer, and I learned many new words. (*****)
Alison Moore: The Pre-War House and Other Stories
After reading the Booker Prize nominated The Lighthouse, I was excited to read this earlier collection of 24 short stories from Alison Moore. They are a little underwhelming; as if written by a grad student. Moore is great at creating tension and awkward scenes. She is an artist when painting a picture of place and atmosphere. Some stories are creepy, and one longs for a hot bath. However, I found them to be a bit formulaic. By the third or fourth story, I was keeping my eyes open for the one clue in the narrative that I would return to in climactic ending sentences. I like Moor's sparse style, and I will read more of her work (written after The Lighthouse) in the future. (***)
