Books of 2017 Part 4: 20-11

20) Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis

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Definitely an intriguing book, but I found this a frustrating read, just because I had a hard time working out the ultimate point of its post-modern, convoluted scope. Initially it feels like a toned-down American Psycho: the milieu and zeitgeist is the same, and Ellis obviously feels at home writing about drugged-up young hip types living it up in NYC. But the first part of this book, which takes up about half of it, is ultimately pointless because when it takes a very dark, American Psychotic turn in part two, the first part and a few of its running gags (like a repeated dialogue motif of Person A:"I saw you at *event* last week" Protagonist, Person B: "thanks but I wasn't at *event* last week") take on this sinister satirical meaning, like American Psycho and Patrick's constantly being mistaken for other characters. But it begs the question as to why the first half, which is all yuppie paparazzi glamour and indolence, is so long. I feel a more efficient writer could have got the message across in half the time, but Ellis is so self-indulgent and loves his name-dropping and glamour fantasies where his strange, other-worldly characters intermingle with the glitterati of the 90s. After it takes its dark turn, it's definitely a more interesting read with post-modern layers of meta-narrative and a sinister underbelly. But it's hard to get what point he's trying to make, because it's both too much of and not enough of each thing: it's a satire of the world of glamour and fashion but taken to an absurd extreme that it no longer resembles the reality it’s satirising. It's a harsh morality tale about our protagonist and his selfish naive indulgences, but his punishment to my mind far outweighs his bad behaviour. Then it's some kind of macropolitical commentary too? And how the world of glamour and the world of politics both feed off and destroy each other? Again it's too hyper-real to make any legible statement on either. It's ultimately then I feel just a post-modern fractured narrative about fashion, sex, and violent crime and the ability of the media to be manipulated. But it's done in a too-fractured way that it becomes more about the fictional narrative exercise than it is about the satirical statement and themes. It’s funny, too, because a colleague saw me reading this when I was about halfway through part one, and I had a good conversation with her about our various reactions and repulsions from American Psycho, and me telling her how light this was compared with the themes of American Psycho, and how this was far more readable. Then a few days later I had to approach her again and completely redact everything I’ve said once it got into the gratuitous torturey bits, just in case she decided to pick this up expecting something pleasant.

19) The Forever War – Joe Haldeman

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This definitely got off on the wrong foot with me, because it fell quite quickly into that trap of man-dudery writing that so much escapist sci-fi does, where female characters are either sexy or kickass or, much worse, kickass enough to be considered sexy despite not being inherently sexy. A lot of the opening training sequence seems to revolve around sex and broism. The first battle takes on a similar approach to Ender’s Game (my #8 book of 2014), too, and becomes quite derivative generally, but then when they get back to Earth and it's all post-apocalyptic dystopia, it gets more intriguing. Not that the dystopia is not familiar too, but it becomes about the whole universe construction that Haldeman has imagined: one foot in earth and humanity, and the other exploring the stars (yes indeed that's a hell of a legspan). It revolves mainly around time dilation and the fact that, through wormhole compression, our hero Mandella lives through the entire centuries-long war and witnesses the cyclical evolution and devolution of humanity, becomes a heterosexual deviant when earth has enforced a homosexual norm in order to control population (which at first is very 70s and politically incorrect but later takes on an amusingly satirical inversion of heteronormative conventions), and becomes an infantry commander due to his relative dilated seniority and despite his mental inexperience. It's just a multidimensional sci-fi caper, with an ultimately very biting commentary on conflict and the 'other'. It's playing in familiar territory but becomes more intriguing, entertaining and even warm and funny as it goes on.

18) Nutshell – Ian McEwan

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I hadn't read any of the thinkpieces or whatever that this book precipitated, but I was aware of its unusual conceit, and got vague wind of some controversial headlines about it. And, sure, it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief. But apart from its strange conceit – for those unaware, it’s told from the first-person point of view of an unborn foetus - it's ultimately just a framing device, and is pretty much the same framing device as Natsume's I am a Cat (My #20 book of 2016): a preternaturally intelligent observer who is present at all of the events of the narrative without the agents necessarily being aware. The worst that I can see this genuinely being accused of is being a pro-life argument, but then that would be absurd but moot anyway since the foetus narrator in question is very late third trimester. The perhaps more intriguing, but at times awkward conceit is that it's effectively a reimagining of Hamlet. Given that the title is taken from a Hamlet epigraph that introduces the book, I must admit it took me far longer than it should have to recognise the significance of the character names ‘Trudy’ and ‘Claude’, but once it becomes obvious, it's a double-edged sword. McEwan plays with the familiar scenario in a modern setting well, and gives a new and interesting exploration of Hamlet's famous impotence by placing him in utero hence physically unable to affect any agency (the scene where he tries to strangle himself with his own umbilical cord, but in shutting off his oxygen supply loses his own will to suicide) is a very dark but witty reinterpretation of the soliloquy. But then it also lends itself to some awfully pointless and on-the-nose self consciousness, such as when Claude, the evening after murdering his brother, decides on a whim to order home-delivered Danish food instead of Indian (because Hamlet’s set in Denmark hahahahaha get it?). Overall I think it's actually a well-constructed postmodern work, very McEwanean in its cynicism and deromanticising of a premise that could be uncannily and unpleasantly sentimentalised in lesser hands.

17) Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose – Flannery O’Connor

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"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." – The Nature and Aim of Fiction, p. 84

It's strange that I've had this on my shelf for so long and not read it. Not just because I love O'Connor, and not just because it's great, but because I feel I've read a lot of bits and pieces from it online, and in my academic reading on her. In fact this book would have assisted me greatly in preparing my mildly ill-fated conference paper in 2007 so it’s a bit of an irony (O’Connor-esque irony) that I bought this specifically for that conference paper, but haven’t read it until now. This is basically a dozen or so papers exploring in great depth O'Connor's approach and philosophy to writing; her Catholicism and the importance of faith and above all answering the mystery as to why she, as a devout Christian, focuses her narrative lens so exclusively on grotesque, violent and downright evil characters. These pieces give a really great insight into her motivation in writing and how she seeks to write not to please people and not to please other Catholics but to shine a light - God's light, as it were - onto a corruptible and atrophying society. The influence of her faith, the deep south, and other writers are all explored and written about with great aplomb and humour, and it helps reinforce why in spite of how alien she is to me, her work so beguiles me nonetheless.

16) The Abbess of Crewe – Muriel Spark

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From a devout Catholic writer trying to exercise grace through portraying its various pitfalls to a witty and biting Catholic satire, about an abbey of nuns that observes very strict dogmatic rituals on one hand, and on the other curates an elaborate electronics room and a telephone line to a wayward missionary sister in various places of the world on the other. What the elaborate electronics room's ultimate purpose is, though, is to bug and survey all parts of the abbey and to keep the newly elected abbess Alexandra informed of all their private conversations. This is all precipitated in flashbacks to the leadup to the election (where Alexandra is ultimately elected) and the dangerous growing popularity of Felicity, a subversive and dubious sister who could challenge Alexandra for the position. It's quite an amusing, Machiavellian tale, wherein Alexandra uses her friends and enemies only in so far as it suits her ambitions. It also feels very timely even now as it explores - maybe superficially - the disconnect between the rule of natural law and the internal rule of ecumenical law. Alexandra's comments about mythology being nothing but garbled history, and history being nothing but garbled mythology - this is the plainest revelation of the way in which this particular abbess manipulates the law - and the media - in order to expunge her own transgressions and deliver those transgressions into others' hands. I did find the nonlinear structure maybe a bit ineffectual, and I think as a linear narrative (i.e. start at the beginning and finish with the election), the story could have had a greater impact at the end. I feel that Spark chopped and mixed the timelines in order to condense the story, so as not to have to lay too much groundwork but plop us in the middle instead, and it's economical stotytelling. But I didn't feel it needed to be, as I'd happily read more deeply and for longer.

15) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J K Rowling

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It was handy reading this straight after I read Chamber of Secrets, because it's so significantly better (yes that’s a spoiler alert for a future post, for those paying attention). What's more, it really relights the fire under the series after it started to feel a little formulaic and familiar in the second book. This is largely due to the fact that it isn't simply "how will Voldemort face Harry this year and come up short through some Deus ex Machina device?", but takes instead the form of a compelling mystery surrounding the figure of Sirius Black, how he escaped from Azkaban, how he keeps getting into Hogwarts and of course what he really wants (even though we supposedly know). It's also really imaginatively realised, with a really compelling and bittersweet unravelling of the narrative parts. There are certainly aspects that are sort of cringily childish to me (like all the quidditch games, and the fact that the narrative is so needlessly partial so that the Slytherin team consistently and reliably cheats. Like can't you just make them generally unlikeable people but have it a tough but fair contest that Gryffindor wins?), but they're sort of necessary evils to deliver a compelling and gripping narrative. It's been 12 years since I saw the film which I regard as the best (mostly because Cuarón), so I couldn't remember all the twists and turns. As such, even though I knew where the main twist was going, the rest was still pretty fresh. Anyway, the biggest compliment I can give it is I came off reading 1.5 Potters and I would have happily picked up the fourth book right after it, had I had it.

14) Boyhood Island – Karl Ove Knausgaard

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This is an interesting part of the overarching memoir, in that it regresses for volume 3 back to childhood and also adds more depth and colour to the hatred Knaausgaard and his brother had for their father, which was adumbrated in volume 1. It has all the great hallmarks from the first two volumes, the humour and pathos, the warts-and-all confessional honesty. He makes the point throughout about memory being unreliable and yet narrates events day by day from when he was six like they happened yesterday. Yet there's no reason to doubt it, as his intellect is obviously towering and his self-portrait is not particularly flattering so you don’t feel like he’s painting things in a more positive light than they happened in. In fact the most engaging thing is how matter of fact he is throughout. It's all completely relatable (although also exotically regional Norwegian) but told without elaboration or philosophising. I've become immune to it a bit, and it takes some reevaluation before I realise how engaging the reflections have been. Knausgaard and his memoir certainly have the same quality as Proust, only he takes an intriguingly non-linear approach to recounting his life story. It’s interesting too, writing/editing these notes for my end of year round-up because I don’t recall a whole lot of details from this, but part of the reason is that this is being muddied with volume 1 and 2; overall I found this particular volume kind of lacked the clear topical focus of the first two because this seemed more like cleaning up boyhood reminiscences, but I’ve enjoyed every volume very much so far.

13) The Power – Naomi Alderman

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This is a really interesting, high-concept feminist sci-fi novel. I feel like it's important that you get past the high concept - essentially, one day young women develop the ability to shoot lightning from their hands - before this book can have any effect at all. But Alderman does a deft job of taking the high concept and running with it, in a real Kafkaesque or Saramagoesque "what if?" kind of way. In actual fact, the book puts me in mind of several other works beyond Saramago's and Kafka's: the first being Brooks' World War Z (My perhaps unfortunately-ranked #56 book of 2016), in that it includes various alternative styles of writing and documentation in order to present itself as a 'history' of events as they occurred in this fictional world. The second, namely the wraparound framing device, that the 'history' has been put together by an aspiring male writer in the 'future' and presented to Alderman to offer her critique, has obvious shades of the epilogue to The Handmaid's Tale, in assessing things after the fact. In terms of the actual story, this is kind of a page-turner. It starts with a number of characters and their personal stories and escalates into a fast-paced thriller that does suck you into the conflicts and the tensions, and wanting to see it reach its logical (and just) conclusion. At the heart of it though, and the wraparound device brings this home - at times a little on the nose maybe, but at other times with great wit and pathos – it is a very provocative thought experiment about what is it that sets men and women apart, and the nature of power. Although a lot of the crucial plot points revolve around men, the acts that they do and the depths they sink to when threatened, as well as the nature of the frail male ego, Alderman also reserves a commentary on the exact shape taken by the turning worm in her created world. When women wield a power that men don't have, what does this do to them? In our world, are women considered more diplomatic, thoughtful, rational than men because they are in a position of inequality so are forced into diplomacy and rationality to overcome the disadvantages? If they held dominance, would things really change for the better? It's not really a question that is answered fully (although the implied answers seem to be "yes" and "no" respectively) but they're very curious questions, explored in engaging depth in what is ultimately a speculative fantasy. I enjoyed this book a lot I should say; it's both gripping while reading, and interesting to ponder after the fact.

12) Immortality – Milan Kundera

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I do love Kundera. He's so witty, insightful and completely European as well. This is an odd narrative, very meta as well, beginning with the author in first person observing a mature woman make "a gesture" at the pool and then taking his image of this woman and spinning a narrative around her. He also dips into history and meta-history, with stories of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's extramarital affair and Peter Paul Rubens' series of love affairs, as well as an imagined dialogue between Goethe and Ernest Hemingway in the afterlife. The most meta part, and also the bit that I struggled with, is when Kundera's own autobiographical reflections interweave with his central figure, the mature woman, and her life. Like all his works, the scope of the novel is very ambitious, but I feel he slightly lost the tread of what he's trying to explore at that point. Narrative hiccups aside though, he's a superbly erudite and intelligent writer, and I feel like there's so much in his philosophical ramblings and investigations of love and life and humanity, and the reflections on mortality. So much to unpack that could probably use some rereading to come to grips with it. Great and entertaining stuff.

11) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

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It’s kind of funny, my reading this now, because it puts me in mind a lot of Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North (My #3 book of 2016), in that it's a love story and a tragedy set incidentally against a backdrop of war. Moreover, it rather makes me feel a bit as if Flanagan owed a bit of a debt to this book. By the same token, this book owes a debt to Brideshead Revisited (Going back a bit now, but my #17 book of 2012) in its sense of nostalgia and of war being a refuge for people searching in vain for meaning and identity. At times this feels like it over-romanticises, yet Faulks has a very pragmatic view of war and when it feels like it develops that exciting, heroic view he's ready with a gruesome depiction of the conflict to bring us back to earth. The prose is also fairly spare, without any real flair but also thereby unpretentious and unostentatious. Despite its unadorned nature, he enunciated far better than I could how I feel about being a father to my son, in this passage which I like so much I'm prepared to recreate it, in full, below:

"...he could not put into words the effect that watching John had on him. He saw him as a creature who had come from another universe, but in Jack's eyes the place from which the boy had come was not just different but a better world. His innocence was not the same thing as ignorance; it was a powerful quality of goodness that was available to all people: it was perhaps what the Prayer book called a means of grace, or a hope of glory.

It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marvelled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth." (p. 198)

The subplot of Jack yearning for his son back home and living every day for news is the most affecting and heart-rending part of the book. The overall narrative, about Stephen's more conventional heartbreak and his increasingly callous, unfeeling response to the carnage speaks of the loss of innocence and the atrophy of the soul that war precipitates. It was quite affecting. It's a romantic, and yet depressingly bleak, vision of the world and humanity. Oddly structured but very affecting.


And of course, as I do every year, I'll leave you hanging on the precipice of my top 10 while I take a step back and do the extremely entertaining task of counting up my bottom books of 2017 tomorrow, from 51-61.