And More Book Reviews

While I was reading the Kavalier & Clay (see main page) I needed now and then a little light relief. Two books happened to fall into my hand and although small and relatively easy to read they where both absolutely wonderful.

The first was I Served The King Of England by Bohumil Hrabal. It’s written in a style I recognized from many old German books – a naive person stumbles across social and political changes and moulds himself into the change so it fits him and he can be happy. Here it is Ditie, a waiter in pre WWII Czechoslovakia whose dream it is to own a hotel himself one day.  He does eventually and then of course with the German occupation and later the rise of communism looses it all. It is a lovely little book, its at all time optimistic and happy main character gives the happenings in Europe a rose tinted glow and one has to remind oneself how bad it really was. But the descriptions are fantastic – the breeding resort of the Germans, where blond and beautiful women are impregnated to breed the future race, the prison, where the millionaires in the communist republic are rounded up and live a rather fun life – and all the adventures our hero lives through. And the sometimes quite hilarious way our waiter turns everything that happens to him into something he always wanted – brilliant. This book is of course a translation and I have no idea if it is a good one or not, but given that the atmosphere at all times seems to be so right – I think it is a rather brilliant one .

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The second book is We Have Always Lived In A Castle by Shirley Jackson. Strangely I found this book in the horror section of a book shop – maybe because she wrote the book that was made into the film The Haunting? Anyway, it is not a horror story although it is very creepy and strange. After Constance has been acquitted of murdering the rest of the family she lives with her little sister Merricat and Uncle Julian in the old family home, despised by the villagers. Merricat wants to preserve the life they have, Uncle Julian tries to piece together the happenings of the day the murder was committed and Constance tends to her vegetable garden and the cooking. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it. But then Cousin Charles arrives, and he would love to get his hands on the safe and more. And Merricat needs to act to protect the life she likes so much… Oh, it is a wonderful little book, creepy enough to stop you from putting it down but not so bad that you can’t sleep afterwards. Full of strange habits – Merricat likes to bury things…. Nice. Go read, it is truly delicious!

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Another book I stumbled across was The Holy City by Patrick McCabe. A long time ago I read his The Butcher Boy and loved it so I was fairly sure to like this one. And yes, I did. It is not a thick book, so you could take it nearly as a bath-time read if it wouldn’t be for the fantastic style it is written in – it needs your full attention. I don’t want to tell you what happens in the book – only that Chris looks back on the wonderful days of his youth during  the swinging sixties, his girlfriend Dolly, who called him Mr.Wonderful and Marcus, a young Nigerian, who was the other Mr. Wonderful… Chris gives you glimpses into his life today – and the more you read, the more he discloses, the creepier it gets. It is a very macabre book, disturbing, disquieting and so very good.

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Another small book I really enjoyed is The Island At The End Of The World by Sam Taylor. It tells the story of a family (father and three children) living on an isolated island, the sole survivors of the flood. The story is told alternately by the father, the son and the oldest daughter, Alice. The life the four people lead is beautiful, rich and nearly utopian. But as we all know, underneath even the most wonderful Utopia lurks something very dark indeed.  And here it is brought on by Alice, a teenager suspicious of the stories their father tells of their past, and a stranger washed up on the shores of the island. This book keeps you with it until the end – luckily it is not a long story, otherwise you’d have to be without sleep for some time. Very creepy, nightmarish, full of suspense – brilliant tale this is!

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I don’t know how many of you have read Jasper Fforde‘s Thursday Next Series – if you liked them, this one is for you: Shades Of Grey. It is the first of three (planned) in a new series and it is fantastically wonderful.

Imagine an Utopia, far away in the distant future, after the Something That Happened. We are still there, populating this world, but in most ways very different from the Previous, about whom not much is known. Humans have lost the ability to see our world in its colours – every person can only see a very small part of the spectrum of colours – the main character, Eddie can only see some reds, making him a Red. There  are Blues and Yellow and of course the mixed ones, Purple and Oranges and Greens – and then there are the Greys -and even though everybody is equal there is a very strict class system operating. There are also the synthetic colours, made from what ever colourful remnants the Previous left behind, which are visible to everyone. Eddie has been sent to the outer fringes to learn humility and his father goes with him to take over a swatchman’s surgery. In this world swatches of colour shown to sick people will heal. I think this book is mainly there to give us as much information about this weird and wonderful world as possible to prepare us for the next ones – there are adventures our hero has to encounter, and there is the truth he will discover. Unfortunately for himself he asks to many questions – ie why is it forbidden to produce more spoons? He also meets somebody who I think will become the Watson to his Holmes in the next books.

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All The Names by Jose Saramago - what a beautiful book this is. Even without considering the story, this book is written in such a strange, interesting and delicious way that just the reading gives enormous pleasure. The story is quirky and slightly mad – Senhor Jose works in the labyrinth that is the central registry of a city. After work he collects every possible fact about famous people, copying secretly from the archives in the registry. One day he finds an index card of an ordinary woman and becomes increasingly obsessed with the need to find out everything possible about her. Enough said, although the story is fascinating and thrilling the main reason for reading this book became more and more the language used, sentences sometimes a whole page long, winding their way in and out of Senhor Jose’s brain like the pathways in the registry between the ceiling high shelves stacked with the lifes and deaths of every citizen. Fantastic find, this was.

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Ufo In Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo is another one of those little gems one sometimes finds. It tells the story of Kwok Yun and her fellow villagers from the day Kwok encounters not only an UFO but also an Westerner in distress. The story is told not in the usual form, it enfolds in the notes of interviews and interrogations made by officials after they hear of the encounters. Slowly we learn of the village and its people, of their dreams and hopes and also about the Chinese mentality when it comes to progress. Fantastic story, well written, very funny in a sad sort of way, very sharp.

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The Missing by Tim Gatreaux is something altogether different. The setting is Louisiana in the 20s and against the background of Jazz, pleasure boats and the Mississippi we read about a kidnapped child and the man on her trail. During his search for the child Sam has to confront his own past and come to terms with his own moral values. The book is a compelling novel about love, compassion, vengeance , hatred and luck. A fantastic read written in beautiful language ( I seem to favour those) which leaves you sort of happy – nice.

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It doesn’t always work though – sometimes the books I buy happen to be awful. One of those is Sunday Daffodil And Other Happy Endings by P.Robert Smith. I should have known by the title, but I must have been rushed or so – this was so bad that I did not read past page 40 – so I can’t really say much, the only thing maybe: it is narrated in the first person and the narrator was for me anyway, a very young woman, until it suddenly became clear that it was a man. And that was it – I didn’t like it very much to start with, but at that point I really hated it – why did the writer make a man sound like a girl? No, not my sort of book.

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And If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor fared only slightly better, at least I did read that to the end, the language was quite ok. But apart from that I didn’t like it, didn’t go anywhere for me, I did not get to know anybody – bah!

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The next read was The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo which was much more fun. It’s a dark and freezing December in Oslo when during a Salvation Army concert one of the choristers is shot. Harry Hole  is called to investigate but can’t find motive, weapon or suspect. And it gets really interesting when the assassin discovers that he shot the wrong man…

Here we have a tense, dark thriller that did not let me rest until I came to the end. And it surprised me at every turn, has everything possible in it, the murder only a small part of the whole. Like the winter in Sweden it shows the night side of people, anything lurking underneath the human exterior and like the long night here it seems to go on forever. It is written very well and I like it a lot, but it does not make you like people. Everybody seems to have dark undercurrents pushing which might erupt at any moment. Nice. I like it dark and cold.

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Now The Boy With The Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu is totally different. Here we have a love story with a difference.  Little jack is born with a frozen heart during the coldest night Edinburgh ever experienced. Midwife Dr. Madeleine, very unconventionally implants a cuckoo-clock into his chest. So he grows up a little different to other children – to start his day he has to wind up his clock. The constant ticking makes him into a bullied victim at school but he must resist strong emotions as feelings like anger and love might endanger his clock heart. So when he falls in love with beautiful street singer Miss Acacia he is putting his life on the line. It is a very tender love story but of course nothing goes as expected – if your heart is a clockwork things tend to run in the wrong directions. Jacks adventures take us to Paris, to Andalusia and into ghost trains and magicians apartments and ends quite unexpectedly. Lovely little book.

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A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick was another Times offer – if you are a Times reader you get a weekly book for only £2.99. Usually they are not at all my cup of tea, but this one sounded ok so I bought it. And it is indeed quite a good read. In rural Wisconsin 1907 Ralph advertises for a reliable wife and Catherine answers the add and travels out to meet him one very cold winters day. They both have plans very different from what the other expects of them and very quickly it becomes a wonderful Gothic tale of seduction, betrayal and lust – but not the way the cover lets you think. It is very good, with unexpected twists and turns, poisoning that goes a different way, a lost son who isn’t and a simple honest woman who is anything but. Another one of those books you don’t want to put down because you need to know, now!

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The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris is a little bit different from my usual reads as it is beneath all it’s strangeness a book about “normal” people in a “normal” world. But I liked it a lot even though it’s rather sad. It tells us the story of Tim, who has a strange affliction – he can’t stop walking. He loves his life, his wife, his job – but his legs seem to have a will on their own. And with the walking that takes him out of his city he is also taken away from his old self. What happens is devastating, beyond anybody’s control. The book reads fairly easily – that makes it nearly a bathtime read if it wouldn’t be for the seriousness of the matter. I am not sure I want to read more of the same author, but I enjoyed this one nevertheless.

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Now this one is a gem. What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn is a fantastic journey into the minds of everyday people, making these said minds look like alien cities with roads leading into dark and tragic corners, sunny parks and dusty shops. The first chapters take you into the brilliant mind of a little girl, her strictly ordered thoughts and suppressed dreams and fears and then catapults you through time and space into the mind of  a security guard struggling to come to terms with more than the death of his wife. And all of a sudden we are in the middle of a mystery, a ghost story and lesson about the history of shopping malls. This book is fantastic, weird, beautiful, sad, funny, haunting…..and a amazing read. Go buy!

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Now for a change the most disappointing book I read in a long time. Not necessarily a bad one, but because so many people (among them Stephen Fry) have recommended this book I was expecting something brilliant. The book? Sum by David Eagleman.  It is a little (very little) collection of stories from the afterlives. Brilliant ideas, 40 tales telling us how the afterlife could be. Some are fun, some are even very good, but some are based on ideas other author have used a long time ago. Humans being a computer to work out the answer to THE question for example has been done as have quite a few of the other tales. That really disappointed me very much. It is pleasant enough if you don’t expect anything, but after all that hype I wanted more. And it’s way to expensive, even though I paid only £5. Still too much.

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And now to something utterly amazingly brilliantly fantastic. Something so well written that I could not pick any holes in it. Not that I wanted to, it was much to entertaining. Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is not a new book, so some of you might know it already. And I assume love it as well. It is a wonderful adventure story, set in a metropolis not of this world, where humans live side by side with mutants, aliens and strange “remades” and where life is a gloomy, dark and frightful thing. Considering the book has 867 pages printed in the smallest possible font I will not try to tell you what it’s all about. It is the adventure of a handful of people, fighting for survival against an alien terror and their own militia. Strange architecture, stranger machines and chaotic battles – steampunk at it’s best. I love it. I was very disappointed when I reached the end. I love it. LOVE IT.

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My next read is as far removed from steampunk as possible, but quite wonderful. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oskar Wao by Junot Diaz is a crazy tale of said Oscars life through the eyes of the people living with and around him – mother, sister, friends.  Oscar is a good and proper nerd, overweight, loves his games and wants to become the next Tolkien. His desperate search for love gets him into trouble and depression. His rebellious sister Lola wants to run away and his strange and quite aggressiv mother does not want to let either of them go.

Even though the books title suggest the books hero the novel is a s much about Oscar’s mother and sister as well as the tragic past of the Dominican Republic. It is a crazy and intricate family saga, it is a lesson in brutal and bloody history, it is a book about love and longing and a lot of heartache and it is funny, manic and sad. And it’s really enjoyable to read.

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The Russian Dreambook Of Colour And Flight by Gina Ochsner is another crazy, manic journey into a different country. Here we go to Russia, to a very mad and hectic place where things happen you didn’t even know could. A handful of people living in a condemned apartment block waiting for the winter to end are hoping each in their own way for a windfall of money. That money is supposed to come from America to help the local museum -if said museum can prove its worth. Nobody thinks for a moment that the money actually will be used to buy exhibits, everybody wants to use the money to make life a little bit easier and nicer for themselves. While everybody is busy working on their own little scheme to lay hands on the money and make plans for spending it museum worker Tanya does everything she can to make the museum presentable. All the exhibits are fakes she makes herself during her spare time, fashioned out of lollipop sticks gum, nail varnish and whatever else she can find. She seems to be the only person here genuinely interested in the money for the museum. Of course nothing goes as planned- the ghost of a deceased husband in the apartment block seems to drive some of the tenants rather mad, the self-important Vitek with a slight tendency to petty crime thinks of more and more outrageous schemes to get the money and the street kids with nowhere to go and nothing to loose put as many spanners in the works as possible. The whole thing descends into total madness, the Russian way (with lots of vodka) until …. well, find out for yourself. It is brilliant, funny, totally crazy, a topsy-turvy world where nothing is familiar, all kept together by a few warm and wonderful characters..One I couldn’t put down before the end.

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The next one I just finished is not easy to review – it’s a huge volume. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts is an amazing adventure yarn based on a true story. Of course I have no idea how much of it is true but the details are so amazing, the extraordinary story so well thought through that it is easy to believe we are dealing with a biography. The books hero is a criminal, escaped from an Australian prison (in there for armed robbery) seeking to disappear in India. In the Bombay slums he finds a life of a different kind, he establishes a free health clinic, joins the mafia, falls in love, goes to jail, acts in a Bollywood movie, fights in Afghanistan….. This is a masterpiece of storytelling, bringing Bombays population into our hearts, from the ever smiling, childlike Prabaker to the mafia boss Khader, from the mysterious and beautiful Karla to the Standing Babas. Shantaram (Man of God’s Peace) is the name given to our hero after he proofed himself worthy and after a few weeks the Bombay people become “his” people. It’s a beautiful read, fast paced, colourful, passionate, gripping and touching. I so hope that we will have a follow-up eventually, telling us about the next 8 or 10 years of his life.

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