Books of 2015 Part 2: 50-41

50) The Enchantress of Florence – Salman Rushdie

#CatchingUpOnMyBookShelf

I'm hoping that my offering of a work from one of my beloved authors as a sacrifice might serve to mollify the angry mobs a bit following my merciless mauling of Good Omens. I'm not offering this as a sacrifice for the sake of it, though – the truth is not even Salman Rushdie is beyond the reach of my savage claws.

One thing I found interesting about this book is, knowing now what a big fan Rushdie is of the brilliant Italo Calvino, that there is a very overt Calvino influence on this work in particular. It has that fantastical, lofty imagination and its creative intermingling of narratives and folklore.

What made it fall down, though, is that despite his brilliance, Rushdie is not Calvino. I think the writing is too dense, too heavy, and doesn't have Calvino’s impish playfulness (and note I've obviously only read Calvino in translation in which certain things are inevitably lost).

The other thing is that this is the first Rushdie novel I’ve read since discovering Calvino, and it’s more than likely that the influence is found in other works. Thinking back on them retroactively though, I think Rushdie’s trademark magic realism works best when it applies a fantastical (Calvino-esque) lens to a situation with real-world gravitas, as in his works set largely in a very twentieth-century and tumultuous Asian subcontinent.

Here I feel the narrative is too far removed from his milieu, and without enough of a sense of humour it just felt too far removed for me, too. And because of that remove, it just lacked the gravity that lends the crucial extra dimension to bring his work to life. It had the sense of a fairly typical fable or fairytale, which is something I never really respond to, especially written in such a post-modern way. I have to confess in light of this I don’t hold out high hopes for his latest work, which sounds to be in very much this same vein.

49) Notes from underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#NiallIsBAE

This was an interesting read. Or, to put it another way, half an interesting read. The first section is largely so much whingeing fluff, that references a lot of works with which I’m unfamiliar (I should also note the edition I read had little editorial synopses at the start of each section – otherwise I may not have picked up that there even were explicit references), and that is largely unconnected to the second part.

The second part, however, is an interesting first-person character study of a misfit and an outcast, and touches on a number of themes that Dostoyevsky would later expand on in Crime and Punishment.

When we spend half the book with this fundamentally irascible and uncharismatic narrator, it’s clear to see where the self-indulgent whining of part one comes from, but in spite of the unsympathetic nature, the book overall is kind of enjoyably bleak and depressing as we watch him so completely self-destruct.

It does, however, remaining both a little whingey and quite cringeworthy at times, and is primarily valuable only as a precursor or companion piece to some later Dostoyevsky works and particularly Crime and Punishment.

48) The Quiet American – Graham Greene

#HarryIsAlsoBAE

Graham Greene is definitely a writer whose complete works I’ll happily trawl through during the course of my reading life. Not only does he have a good range of content and substance but to me he’s a consummate storyteller who, even when his themes aren't particularly profound, knows perfectly how to weave a narrative.

Why, then, does this quite well-known of his works find itself in the bowels of the top 50? Quite simply, this is a case where the themes didn't strike me as particularly profound – not when compared to The Heart of the Matter for instance – and as such the only thing to recommend this is the story. A story with which, sadly, I'm quite familiar, due to the 2002 Phillip Noyce film adaptation.

I didn’t really care for the Noyce adaptation, either, even though reading the story on the page feels perfectly suited to the interplay between the hapless Brendan Fraser and Michael Caine, and I think therein lies the rub. It just isn’t a story that captivated my attention in the first place, and looking back I find the adaptation fairly faithful, without the book adding any detail or nuance to the plot or characterisation that I may have missed the first time around. So it’s probably an unfortunate circumstance for this book, but at the same time I think if I’d come to it fresh that I still wouldn't mark it down as any particular masterpiece.

47) The Tiger's Wife – Téa Obrecht

#BaileysPrizeWinners

So we come to the first of what was actually my informal and not very stringently-followed reading task of this year, trying to tackle the list of Baileys (formerly Orange) prize winners. Now I’ll have a fair bit to say in later entries (both higher and lower) about my thoughts on the prize in general, but suffice to say this book falls pretty much in the middle of the selection I read, ranking-wise.

We’ve also I think stumbled upon the area of my book write-ups I wallow in every year, where I can’t really come up with anything bad to say about a book but can’t otherwise explain why there are so many books ahead of it. The fact is that I just think I enjoyed 46 books more than this.

This is the story of a young volunteer doctor, her search for her lately-late grandfather’s memento box and a reminiscence of the stories he told her. It’s an interesting narrative with some elements of magical realism and a fluid, evocative writing style.

Some of the narrative I just found more interesting than others. I enjoyed the frequent recurrence of the deathless man and the humanity of this character. I didn't however get a whole lot out of the title character or her saga, and found it a little too enigmatic and elusive. And because I sense the full effect of the story is obtained when all the elements are supposed to come together, when some of those elements don’t work for me, the whole didn't come together either.

Look, I'm probably clutching at straws here. Even though I didn't adore it, there’s nothing really wrong with the book. Go read it and tell me why I'm wrong.

46) Bleak House – Charles Dickens

#CatchingUpOnMyBookshelf #OneDickensAYear

Yes, one dick. ens a year. After quite enjoying A Tale of Two Cities last year, I picked this up and after about three pages I realised I could only feasibly tolerate Dickens’ impossibly swampy writing style once a year, so I made this pledge to tackle one a year henceforth. And I don’t think it will be long before this yearly custom becomes an annual tradition.

Bleak House was chosen above other Dickens I have on my shelf largely due to the immense popularity of the BBC television adaptation which I never watched and of whose existence I was only barely aware at any point in my life, but that nevertheless managed to influence my reading choice. And the fact is I think it would work a whole lot better as a TV series than it does as a book. Not because it doesn’t work, but just because there’s so many characters with different storylines, that I think it’s really well suited to episodic storytelling, whereas combined with Dickens’ swampiness it’s a little too much to take in one go.

What’s positive about it is that it did draw me in – eventually, much like A Tale of Two Cities did – with the romantic drama unfolding and the overarching sense of universal justice, and I put it down certainly feeling satisfied.

The other odd thing about it is that, for whatever reason, the narrative just feels very familiar and contemporary. Despite the whole fact that everybody’s wearing bonnets and riding in horse-drawn carriages thing, it doesn't feel anachronistic, and I think it’s to Dickens’ credit that even in such a 19^th-century milieu and situation (children being disinherited and identities being mistaken and so forth) the themes still hold some resonance.

Would I recommend reading this? Not unless you’re really into this sort of thing, but otherwise I suspect the TV adaptation is really rather enjoyable and probably a safer option.

45) Larry's party – Carol Shields

#BaileysPrizeWinners

You’d think that a book with a title like “Larry’s Party” wouldn’t stand a good chance of being my favourite book of the year, and quite obviously you’d be right. At the same time, this has its merits.

It’s a formally interesting work, with each chapter revolving around a theme in Larry’s life – I can’t remember all of them but there’s Larry’s Love, Larry’s Words, I think there’s probably a Larry’s Leisure Suit at some point – while at the same time it haphazardly progress chronologically as well. I think the structure owes a fair bit to James Joyce, in particular the latter chapters of Ulysses like the one dedicated entirely to Leopold Bloom’s various opinions of water or the one made up of questions and answers, but I didn’t hate it for all that.

The reason it’s down as low as this is that formal inventiveness can only go so far to overcome the fact that Larry here is an ordinary guy with an ordinary story, and at times I felt a little in the doldrums with the blandness of it all.

It’s quite a sweet story of a guy going through two failed marriages and hopping around different cities and two countries (well, the US and Canada) building garden mazes for rich clients, and at times its quite funny, but  there’s just so much here that falls under the umbrella category of ‘ordinary’ and I couldn’t really find much sparkle in it.

44) The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood

#CatchingUpOnMyBookshelf

I feel like we’re getting a fair bit of beloved authors slipping down the rankings this year. I didn't read any Thomas Pynchon, Kazuo Ishiguro or Iain Banks this year so we can’t assess all of them, but otherwise what is Atwood doing down here?

Well firstly, as we know, Atwood - for all her formal brilliance - has only two types of books that she can write: wonderfully cynical and inventive speculative fiction, and stories about middle-aged women coming to terms with, and reflecting on, childhood and/or young adult traumas inflicted on them by some domineering female bully figure in the guise of a friend and/or sister. And in the character of Zenia we have perhaps the most crystal-clear example of the domineering female bully.

I actually think that’s to its detriment, because it feels a little overblown, with three different middle-aged women all having their psychology revolve so heavy-handedly around the unspeakably evil Zenia ‘umbra’. The fact is that we don’t get a whole lot of actual Zenia until about halfway through the book, by which stage she’s been so heavily built up in our minds that even the worst Nazi war crimes that she commits could only really be what we expect, and they've lost their power to shock.

Or at least that’s how I found it. I also didn't really enjoy it because it had such a miserable façade throughout. Each time I'd pick it up I'd just wonder what kind of melodrama I’d be in for during this sitting. It’s a perfectly fine book, but the fact is I respond best to Atwood’s other mode of writing, and I also react more favourably to the less overtly insidious female bullies (like Laura in The Blind Assassin for example).

43) Empire of the sun – J.G. Ballard

#NewAuthors #BooksIFeltIShouldReadAtSomePoint

This is an interesting book, and a story that I feel I've seen in many other guises, the POW camp-from-kid’s-perspective trope. At the same time I feel like this is probably one of the pioneers of this trope.

The central character of Jim is a really fascinating character. He’s a funny, formative age – I think around 11 or 12 for most of the story – so is innocent and childlike at the same time as being sensible of the world around him. He cuts a figure that is almost callous at times, in that it’s sometimes hard to tell if he doesn't quite understand what’s going on, or just doesn't care. It’s like the war-zone is the only world he’s ever known so he’s resigned to it.

The book is written very episodically, with a ‘this happened then that happened’ kind of style, which I think I’d find quite annoying except that the story is interesting. There were times when I felt jolted forward in time a bit too much, but it didn't bother me a great deal.

The last few chapters after the war is over comprise one of the most captivating portrayals of a bizarre state of flux, and they really elevated this from what I otherwise found good but standard fare.

42) If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller – Italo Calvino

#CatchingUpOnMyBookshelf

So in one post we move from a Calvino-influenced Rushdie work to a Calvino-influenced Calvino work. I don't think I've actually written up any Calvino - I might be wrong - but I think I've read most of his stuff in between my TIME challenge (side reading of which I didn't write up) or before I started doing this.

This is quite a lot of fun, and the sort of fun that only Calvino could even have conceived of. Alternating between a narrative about you, the reader, trying in your hapless, possibly neckbearded way to hit on an attractive girl by discussing the Italo Calvino book you both started reading and being all intellectual and sensitive, and the actual various books you keep starting to read but then discover they’re unfinished, and I think there's probably a giant tortoise somewhere? It’s confusing enough even to try and describe.

It’s about the most fractured book I've read, whose own continuous through-line is concerned exclusively with the fractured nature of its own story, and as such it’s perhaps more fun in conception than it is to actually experience it.

I think when Calvino’s taken me to so many fascinating places in the Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities, his self-conscious and explicitly self-referential narrative here feels a little humdrum and even repetitive. It could perhaps be seen as Calvino’s most emblematic and complete book, but that doesn't necessarily make it his most enjoyable.

41) Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer

#NewAuthors #BooksIFeltIShouldReadAtSomePoint

Speaking of explicitly self-referential books…

This was my first real taste of Foer (not counting the film adaptation of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and it was good enough to make me interested in more, but not so good that I immediately went out and built a shrine to the guy in my bedroom, which to be fair is not something that happens very often.

Telling the story of the ‘author’ journeying to the Ukraine to try and piece together the life of his grandfather, it has - and not just in the whole grandfather thing - quite a few similarities with The Tiger’s Wife, namely the shifting between narrators, perspectives and narrative styles. Where this stands above Obrecht’s book is just out of sheer enjoyment.

Foer employs a singular humour and style, offbeat and somewhat irreverent, which makes for enjoyable reading but at the same time leavens the gravity of the story a little too much at times, so when the more heavy stuff hits it’s quite jarring. It’s a really odd book, which I knew it would be, but one that’s worth reading.