All posts tagged contemporary fiction

‘Rook’ by Jane Rusbridge

2013-04-22 16.20.11-1It says more about the height of my ‘to be read’ pile, and the slowness of my reading, than about my enthusiasm for this book, that it has taken me so long to read Rook by Jane Rusbridge.  The slightly battered edges of my copy of the novel also testify to the fact that I have lent it to a couple of people telling them that although I’ve not read it yet, I’m sure they will enjoy it.  So when it was last returned to me I made it my priority.

It is a story about secrets, those of a community and of a family; about what is buried, both literally and metaphorically, and what one might find if one digs in the right place.

Set in the richly observed town of Bosham, it is a tale interweaving known historical facts, local folklore and a central conflict between mother and daughter, Ada and Nora.

Ada has an increasingly tenuous grasp on reality, spending much of her time reflecting on the past, through which we gather fractured fragments of her life.  She resists the care of Nora, who has returned home, without warning, leaving her life as a concert cellist to spend her time giving music lessons to local children.  The women’s uneasy home life is further disrupted by the arrival of a documentary film crew, researching the legend that an 11th century king may be buried in Bosham church, and seeking permission for an exhumation.

In order to distract herself from her own uncomfortable memories, Nora tries to keep herself busy with running and involvement with the local community, but when she finds an injured fledgling rook, the bird becomes her main focus of attention.  It lives in the house with her, and as it grows, it sits on her shoulder to be petted, or ferociously attacks unwanted visitors.  As it grows and recovers, so  does Nora.

I’m afraid, I found this aspect of the book a bit tricky, as the idea of a bird in the house, or on someone’s shoulder, sends unpleasant visceral shudders down my spine.

What I did enjoy about the novel was the rich language and the evocation of place, of the environs of the town of Bosham, and the idea of the layers of history that lie there.  It made me want to visit and explore, and to see the clouds of birds in the sky (from a safe distance birds are fine!) and feel the wind from the sea on my face, so vividly can I imagine them from the descriptions.

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by rowena on April 24, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on April 24, 2013

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‘HHhH’ by Laurent Binet – A Review

20130301_110437Written originally in French, and translated by Sam Taylor, HHhH by Laurent Binet is an attempt at a new take on historical fiction.

Entirely coincidentally, it comes as an excellent counterpoint to my recent reading of Jim Crace’s Harvest, and the comments he made during his talk at Foyles.  Crace said that he doesn’t do research for his novels set in the past, because facts get in the way of imagination.  Binet, or the character of himself that he portrays in the book, is the polar opposite; he drives himself nearly mad with his search for the facts, obsessively checking details like the colour of a Mercedes, green in one report, black in another, worrying endlessly about giving the historical characters internal thoughts and invented dialogue.

The novel tells the story of Operation Anthropoid, the World War II mission undertaken by Czechoslovakian parachutists to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the ‘most dangerous man of the Third Reich’.  Notionally SS second in command to Himmler, the story was that Heydrich was Himmler’s brain, which, in German was shortened to ‘HHhH’.  ’The Butcher of Prague’, Heydrich was also one of the architects of ‘The Final Solution’, and so is a perfect subject through which to dissect the banality of evil.

Presented in 257 short chapters, the novel deconstructs the process of writing  historical fiction.  So interspersed between the story of Heydrich’s career up to his appointment as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, and the manner in which the Czechoslovak government in exile in London was treated by the British government, are tales of the writer’s obsessive research, the films he has watched, the games he has played, his dislike of the work of his rivals and the tribulations of his relationship with his girlfriend.

This might sound as if this trivialised a serious story of great violence and astonishing bravery, but it didn’t.  Instead, despite the clear manifesto that he sets out at the beginning of the book that he will only write things he knows to be facts, dismissing others who have invented dialogue and scenaria to flesh out the history, as the work progresses, he cannot control his own imagination.  He imagines himself there, at the bend in the road, waiting for the Mercedes to arrive.  Even though he knows the outcome of the story, he cannot stop himself from imagining a happy ending for his heroes.

The pace of the novel is brilliant.  Giving the reader the information in short chapters, and, at the outset, offsetting the history with the minutiae of the writer’s life, lightens the relentless darkness of the tale; but the screw is turned slowly but constantly through the book, so that by the time it arrives at the climax of the mission, to that moment of standing at the bend in the road, the tension is nearly unbearable.  I was totally hooked and holding my breath, even though I knew what was going to happen (from a fairly awful 1970s film,’ Operation Daybreak’  with badly miscast Anthony Andrews and Martin Shaw….).

Have you read this?  Do let me know your reaction to it.

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by rowena on March 4, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on March 4, 2013

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Jim Crace at Foyles

IMG00769-20130219-1931There is endless fascination in listening to writers talk about writing and their personal approach to it.

Every one is different; for each who extols the necessity of ‘writing what you know’, there are ten who insist that you must make stuff up, and for the ten who insist on years of research before setting pen to paper, there’s one who insists that you should just make stuff up.  There are the planners, setting out the skeleton of each chapter before writing anything, and then there are those who collect bits of pieces of writing together in files before they can work out what story it is they’re telling.  There are gushers and miniaturists, hand writers and iPad-ers.  For whatever aspect of character and approach you can find, it is also possible to find the polar opposite.

Maybe I’m just looking for reassurance that my own rather haphazard approach is as valid as any other.

Jim Crace (JC) is a writer whose work I admire, and as I have just read his new novel ‘Harvest‘, when a friend told me that he would be speaking at Foyles bookshop, I booked a place straight away.

He is a speaker to whom is very easy to listen, and was thought provoking in his analysis  of his own writing style.  He explained that while he might have tried to write according to what others might regard as a better way, he always returned to his own voice, which he described as the writing voice I have been given.  This voice is rhythmic, moralistic and serious, but not autobiographical .

JC suggested that his happy life is antithetical to the production of fiction inspired by the ‘use what you know’ principal, as fiction doesn’t like happiness, long contended marriages and well adjusted children.  Readers want to experience drama through fiction rather than experience it in life.

An attempt at a novel inspired by autobiography was abandoned, on the advice of his agent, after 30,000 words.  A couple of days after taking the decision to stop writing, despondent, he and his wife took a journey from their home in Birmingham to an art exhibition in London.  On the train, near Watford Gap, a generally unprepossessing space between two tiny hillocks, run through by a motorway, railway lines, home to a service station the butt of many jokes, and two rivers, one of which flows to the sea on the east coast and the other to the west, he noticed the ridge and furrow patterns in the surrounding fields.

It was that pattern in the landscape which started him thinking about the centuries of agricultural activity in England; that one of the important things about the country is that it has been occupied for so many years that there are layers of human habitation and history everywhere.  It is not possible to walk anywhere where no-one has walked before you; and that we are surrounded by the signs of history if we care to notice them; it’s all drenched in narrative.

At the watercolour exhibition the picture which jumped out at him was one of a bird’s eye view of field enclosures. This, together with his ‘Watford Gap Moment’, started him thinking about land clearances and the people affected; and that even if he wrote something ‘historical’ it could still have contemporary relevance as there have always been, and still are, people being turned off land.

He quoted Hilary Mantel’s ‘rule’ that in historical fiction if you are going to include a fact, then you must ensure that it is correct.  JC said he didn’t adhere to that tenet.  For him, facts create constraints on narrative imagination – the less you know, the more you can imagine.

The questions from the audience after he had read from Harvest, focussed on his stated intent that this would be his last novel.  Some people were worried about how he would express his creativity without fiction to write(!).  He assured us that he still has plans to write some natural history books, (which, with his love for making things up may not be entirely based on science), and that, after many years of sitting alone in his work room in his garage, he has other creative plans outside….and there’s always the possibility that he will change his mind and find the right ‘autobiographical’ book to write.

So, here’s to a Watford Gap Moment for us all today.

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by rowena on February 25, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on February 25, 2013

http://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/jim-crace-at-foyles/

‘Harvest’ by Jim Crace

‘Harvest’, Jim Crace’s new novel, begins as the barley harvest is nearly over, the cutting has been done and the women and children are gleaning the last pearls before the pigs are allowed onto the fields to rootle around for the scraps.  It’s a routine familiar to every resident of the unnamed village, but their traditions are under threat.

The omens are poor when three strangers, a mysteriously appealing woman, and two men set up camp on the village’s common ground, and, on the same night, part of the manor house is set on fire.  At the same time, another man, nicknamed Mr Quill, is walking around the village scratching things in a book.

These events lead to violence, suspicion and destruction.  Over a period of a week, Walter Thirsk, the narrator, sees his adopted home ruined and his neighbours scattered.  The villagers punish the strangers cruelly, and as things worsen, turn on each other; while the landowner, newly arrived to survey the area, takes advantage of the resulting disorder.

The story is set in a past on the verge of change; old ways will be set aside to make way for sheep on the land.  It’s a time when a man might be fearful of being injured at night in case the pigs come to attack, and when the trouble caused by the arrival of strangers will so disrupt a community that they can think of nothing else, and leave farm and housework undone in order to plot revenge.

This is a book which is likely to provoke a variety of responses; dip into the discussion of it on Radio 4′s Saturday Review and you’ll get a flavour of the disparity of strongly held views.

I enjoyed it for the lyric fluidity of the prose, the evocation of an unnamed place in a time I will never know and the creation of a character I was not sure I entirely believed or trusted. But I was frustrated by the slow pace; what had felt like luxuriant description in the early chapters, got on my nerves towards the middle and end; and I was also puzzled by the narrative voice, by the complexity of expression of Walter, who declared himself to be such a simple man, but who had an extensive and elaborate vocabulary. While I was enjoying the read, I surrendered to the beauty of the voice, but, inevitably, enjoyment turned to resistance when I became impatient with the pace.

This has, however. broken a spell of my not enjoying reading anything I attempted, a time which made me feel out of sorts, and now, having found much to admire in this book, and having read it with an appreciation that took me away from being aware of the passage of time, my proper relationship with books has been restored, for which, a heartfelt thanks.

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by rowena on February 13, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on February 13, 2013

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The Need to Read

IMG_2946I’ve not been reading enough lately, even though I am an adherent of the belief that it takes a better reader to make a better writer.  I’ve had a couple of false starts with novels that I began to resent having to carry around with me, and found myself reading newspapers left behind in train carriages rather than take the offending volumes out of my bag.  So I’ve abandoned the attempts at these worthy books from ‘the canon’ and instead am about to launch myself on the pile of new (ish) releases I’ve recently acquired variously through the generosity of others, and out of seeking refuge from the snow in a book shop yesterday.

I’ll let you know how I get on, but in the meantime, it’s always good to have a photo of some books.  These were in the window of a second hand shop in Galerie Vivienne in Paris.

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by rowena on February 12, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on February 12, 2013

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The Bottom of the Pile

IMG00718-20130111-1137What do these two books have in common?  I’d almost forgotten I had them, but now I’ve rediscovered them, they have made me feel a little guilty because these are but a couple of the books that I have started, but never finished reading.

It’s not really apparent from the photo but both volumes are water damaged – they were at the bottom of the piles of books on the floor by my bed and were the badly affected when I had a water problem in the flat.  In a way, these are the sacrificial ones, by soaking up so much they protected the stacks above them; so even though there were 20 or so piled up handy for bedtime reading, only these two were damaged.

But the fact remains, I’ve never finished them.  Now that they have resurfaced, should I attempt to read them again?  Can I even read the water damaged pages, some of which are a little stuck together; or should I replace them and try again?  They have a war theme in common, but I’m fairly sure I bought them several years apart.

I bought Stalingrad because I had talked, or rather, encouraged my Russian teacher to talk about, the siege of the city in the Second World War, as it was his home town and he had family stories to tell.  It’s a dramatic story, but somehow I couldn’t stick with the book.

The Kindly Ones originally published in France, was a celebrated there as a literary phenomenon, and a number of my French colleagues recommended it to me.  I didn’t feel up to reading it in French, but when I saw it had been translated I bought it fairly quickly, and I tried really quite hard to persevere, but abandoned it after about 100 pages, which as you can see didn’t make much of an impression on the whole thing.

I’ll let you know if I do go back to them…..

So, what books have you never managed to finish, worthy or otherwise?

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by rowena on January 11, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on January 11, 2013

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The Life of Pi – A Review

I must have picked up the book of The Life of Pi, and put it back down again several time before I finally bought it, probably as the third book in a ‘three for two’ offer.  Each time I had been put off by the blurb on the back, which talked about philosophy and theology; and generally, I prefer a story which inspires insight, rather than being signposted to something deep.

As it turned out I really enjoyed the book; I read it entirely as an allegorical adventure, as an act of pure story telling, which I consumed, utterly engrossed, and when I wasn’t reading it, I was anticipating getting back to it.  Any philosophy rather passed me by.

I approached the movie wondering how believable the story of the boy Pi surviving a ship wreck on a life boat with Richard Parker, an idiosyncratically named adult Bengal tiger, could be on the screen, when in my imagination it had made perfect sense.

The fact that the film is in 3D was also something which I wondered about, I’ve never seen a whole film in 3D before; apart from a short cartoon thing at Disneyland, I was a novice to the technology.  Until now, the movies that have come out in that format have not appealed to me, based on special effects rather than story, and so I was curious to see what the effect would be.

The answer is that the film is beautiful, exploring every possible aspect of a small boat adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, storms, waves washing over them, starlit skies reflected in still water, flying fishes, a whale, and glowing jelly fish.  All with an adult Bengal tiger (albeit mainly CGI) on board.

The thing I liked in the book was the step by step way that Pi learnt how to mange the tiger, from pure fear for his life, through incrementally, gradually gaining ground on it, to finally training it.  The cod religious themes were more noticeable to me in the film than the book but not to such an extent that it spoilt it, and it certainly didn’t feel like a long film, even though it is, at over 2 hours.

I think, because I suffer so badly from sea sickness, what appealed to me most was the strategic use of boat rocking to induce nausea to make the tiger more malleable.  I just know how it felt.

And fundamentally the film is about story telling and film making, because it poses the question about story, which would you sooner hear, an elaborate imaginative, beautiful one, or one which is bleak and mean?

I’m still not convinced about  the 3D-ness of it, as although having things leap out of the screen at me was a bit startling, it wouldn’t be my first choice for entertaininment; I think I would have enjoyed it as much in the regular 2 dimensional format (and I wouldn’t have got the dent in the top of my nose from the silly glasses.)

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by rowena on January 8, 2013  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on January 8, 2013

http://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2013/01/08/the-life-of-pi-a-review/

‘Hawthorne & Child’ by Keith Ridgway – A Review

I got this book on the basis of a recommendation from Isabel Costello and her literary sofa, and after hearing the author read some extracts at an event a couple of weeks ago.  He read very well, in a beautifully mellifluous tone which accentuated both the pathos and humour in an extract about one character’s obsession with the death  of a racing driver and the evil of Tony Blair, and I wanted to know more.

So, what of the whole book?  Hawthorne and Child are a couple of police detectives apparently straight out of the central casting mould of buddy cops, different from each other, but complimentary, who’ve worked together so long, they know all of each others foibles.  We first meet them as they embark on the investigation of a random early morning drive by shooting in a street in north London.  A standard opening chapter for any detective novel, a murder, the preliminary gathering together of the obvious clues.  But that is the only thing about this book which resembles standard detective fiction.

We never return to this murder, as each subsequent chapter focusses on a different set of protagonists; sometimes Hawthorne and Child are central, sometimes peripheral.  It feels like a loosely connected collection of short stories, as there is no central narrative thrust which runs through the book.

Maybe it’s about the impossibility of always being able to know a complete narrative of anything in real life, and of turning on its head the expectation that a novel will present a coherent story arc, and the mystery of other people and their stories; or maybe it’s challenging us to try to make sense of the unrelated fragments, making us aware of our need to make up or complete partial stories.  Or maybe it’s all taking place in Child’s imagination.  I’m not sure, and I suspect that is at least part of the point.

The writing is very clever and beautifully done, with wonderful phrasing and rhythm which worked so well at the reading, and it is this which kept me going towards finishing the book.  The sense of place, of the peripheral areas of north London is also recognisable and fully realised; but I couldn’t help but feel a bit let down at the end when the book simply stopped.

The main gift it gave me was to make me think about what I find satisfying in a book; yes, it’s about language inventiveness, vocabulary and rhythm; and yes, it’s about place and rounded characterisation, but I also want narrative tension, because without that itch to know what will happen next, it is far too easy to put the book to one side and to read something else instead.  As with any collection of stories, I don’t think it would matter what order you read the chapters in Hawthorne & Child, as one does not follow on from the other; it’s just that together they build up a picture of time and place.

I might be imagining it, but is there a mini trend at the moment for books of loosely connected stories to be published as novels?  I’m thinking of  Girl Reading by Katie Ward, which I enjoyed, and A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan and The Slap by Christos Tsiolkos, neither of which I managed to finish.  Could this be because the commercial market for short fiction is so weak?  What do you think?

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by rowena on December 19, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on December 19, 2012

http://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/hawthorne-child-by-keith-ridgway-a-review/

‘Is Crime the new Literary Fiction?’

Earlier this week I went to a panel discussion burdened with the question, Is Crime the new Literary Fiction?  The panel comprised Lee Childs, Sophie Hannah, John Banville (as his crime writing alter ego Benjamin Black) and Peter James.  The chairman was not Mark Lawson as advertised, but someone else, who assumed we must know who he is; unfortunately I don’t.

I wanted to go to hear the discussion because I like reading crime fiction, and also because I enjoy hearing crime fiction writers  getting bent out of shape and aggravated about the arbitrary distinctions drawn in the world of fiction between literary and genre.  I should confess straight away, however, that I have never read any books by any of the writers on the stage, even though I would describe myself as a major consumer of the genre.  Having listened to the discussion, it’s fair to say that none of them persuaded me that I should be reading their work.

I find it an interesting conclusion to have reached, as usually listening to writers makes me want to read their work,  but it has been useful and has crystallised some of my understanding of what I enjoy in the crime genre.

The quality question was dealt with fairly quickly, with consensus that not all crime fiction is first rate, and that some ‘literary’ output is fine, and that perhaps it is most useful to think of genre as an aid to identify the tribe of people who like particular types of books (cue a bitchy remark by Lee Childs about ‘the 64 year old English man who thinks the most interesting people he’s ever met were with him at prep school’ genre created by Julian Barnes.)

In a crime series, the writers suggested that it is the main character which is important; they expect their readers to remember the characterisation of the hero detective, while few will recall the plot once the book is finished.  The plot is needed, but only as the engine to illuminate character.  With this I am in total agreement,  where I differ is on a very strong opinion expressed by Lee Childs that he hates the idea of his protagonist going on any sort of ‘journey’.  He is determined that there should be no learning curve or development of the character of his hero, who learns nothing, and never changes, as he knows everything he will ever know or need to know, already.

While I too dislike the current obsession with characters’ journeys because it seems to be an unnecessarily rigid orthodoxy, if I think about the crime fiction series that I enjoy, a key element of them is the development of the hero, usually getting older and more world weary and cynical; I’m thinking of Ian Rankin’s Rebus books or James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheau series.

There was a difference of opinion in the discussion about how outlandish or realistic the scenario in crime fiction might be, and if the writers have a political agenda.  The only thing that was in common was a dislike of authority figures, although no-one had any particular sympathy for the little guy.

My preferred crime writers tend to deal in contemporary issues and a tangible sense of place and time; Ian Rankin in present day Edinburgh, and James Lee Burke in Louisiana.  Where there are chaotic and confusing times, these writers seek to make sense of it by using the conventions and order of the crime genre, while providing something much more than just a puzzle.

It was interesting to hear that none of the writers on the panel have a clear and fixed idea of the outcome of their novels at the time when they first start writing them. This affords them a sense of discovery and enough interest to keep them writing; and writing quickly with a lot of impetus and momentum is key to writing an exciting novel, it seems.  There’s a lesson there for us all.

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by rowena on November 15, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on November 15, 2012

http://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/is-crime-the-new-literary-fiction/

Monsters?

A recent article in the Telegraph of an interview with Colm Toibin reminded me of advice I once heard Hanif Kureishi give in a radio discussion, which was that you should never write worrying about what your mother would think of your novel.  Kureishi, a well known miner of his own experiences in the pursuit of his fiction, was of the view that his own life and his experience of it, was exclusively his, to use as he wished.

It’s one aspect of the ‘write what you know’ debate.  Some might suggest that sticking to what you know underplays the value of your imagination, and prefer to use research as the bedrock of their fiction.  I suspect that it depends, like so many things in the writing process, of who you are, and what you like doing.  All writers must be magpies picking up bits and pieces wherever we can, constantly asking ourselves how we might use this or that tidbit or gem.  I’ve often caught myself contemplating exactly the thing that Colm Toibin talked about in this extract of the newspaper interview which I’ve taken the liberty of copying.

Tóibín explains that he once told a class that “you have to be a terrible monster to write. I said, ‘Someone might have told you something they shouldn’t have told you, and you have to be prepared to use it because it will make a great story. You have to use it even though the person is identifiable. If you can’t do it then writing isn’t for you. You’ve no right to be here. If there is any way I can help you get into law school then I will. Your morality will be more useful in a courtroom.’

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by rowena on October 27, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by rowena on October 27, 2012

http://rowenadunn.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/monsters/

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