The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

"The feel of his warm hard body under the silky shirt was almost worryingly beautiful, a promise too lavish to believe in."

This novel has been sitting on my shelf awaiting my attention for a year or so now. I was initially put off by its girth. I've had a short attention span of late and was reticent to launch into something sizeable. I noted however that The Line of Beauty  is included on a lot of must read lists and so my rubber arm was twisted.

There was something so perfect about launching into a lengthy tale about a young man who is really a fish out of water in the cocaine fuelled years before AIDS began to take a hefty toll during the four hour process of turning blonde again ( with eighties bangs to boot). Set in the upper class echelons of the British ruling class, the protagonist is very much an outsider. Nick Guest is a young guy with rather well to do friends, who have helpfully let a room to him while he's at university. As he grows into himself the sense of difference and inclusion is a weird one. That sense of being in but out is one I could always relate to.

Sure it was a little awkward as the foils went in, I was worried my hairdresser could read the gay sex scenes, or the cocaine snorting depictions, over my shoulder, or  perhaps more upsettingly, the words Margaret Thatcher. Hollinghurst is a beautiful writer and the entire novel just seemed to fly by.

I'm not sure I've enlightened you too much today with this discussion. I'm a bit tired - summer is so draining. In short, there is a reason why this novel is so well-regarded, it is a great read.

5 out of 5 - I am killing the 1001 list at the moment.

A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

"And the hawk, alert to every movement, returned their stares until they turned away and passed on."

Life is pretty grim for our poor protagonist, Billy Casper in a poor English mining village. His one joy is tending for the kestrel that he has stolen from its nest. School is hell, and home isn’t much better. This is not the kind of read that will cheer you up my friends. Thankfully it is a very quick read, as I am currently not in the mood for suffering of any kind. Right now I love fiction that transports me to other worlds or happier ones at any rate.

His mother is powerless, his father is absent, and his brother is a horror. In fact, reading about his brother just made me super angry. Not crazily so as I was sitting in the GP’s office and apparently my blood pressure is just fine thanks for asking.

I’m waffling, aren’t I? I think this novel brilliantly captures a torturous upbringing and a feeling of being without options. The sense of purpose and joy posed by a pet brings only momentary respite and as you might imagine, and the ending did not inspire further joy. Having done such a brilliant job of writing this novel, I probably owe the writer the full five star rating and yet, it left me so glum that I had to deduct a point.



4 out of 5 birds can sometimes make you soar.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

“It’s the fate of most Ping-Pong tables in home basements eventually to serve the ends of other, more desperate games.”

Rare is the novel that can make you laugh out loud one minute and hate yourself the next. This is such a novel and it is just as good as all the critics would have you believe. Every family is a bit of a basket case aren’t they? Recognising aspects of my own in this novel was equal parts mortifying, entertaining and sad. It really is no surprise to me that this novel has been so well regarded ( yay another tick on the 1001 novel list) including winning the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize (thanks Wikipedia).

Albert and Enid Lambert remind me of my parents, particularly in the way Enid espouses judgements on all who will listen and Alfred’s worsening grip on reality. I could see the worst aspects of myself and my brother in the behaviour of their three children, Gary, Denise and Chip. Let's hope my parent's upcoming cruise is not as eventful.

I'm glad I read this when I did. I think I'm the right age. Old enough to have lived and made some interesting mistakes, and young enough to be confused by the notion of ageing and the way it creeps up on you. Sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud like Denise, trying to be the perfect daughter. Its probably something a lot of people can relate to. Substitute the ping pong table with a pool table and you have my parent's house summed up.

 5 out of 5 -  all families are weird, all relationships are strange.

What Maisie Knew by Henry James

"Maisie's eyes opened wide again; this was so different from what she had expected."

Yet another rare occasion where I'd seen the movie before reading the book. Hard to believe seeing as it is a classic. Perhaps it was the allure of Skarsgard, yes definitely. What struck me with the film and was further underlined by the novel, was how despicable Maisie's parents are. Here is an impressionable young child, trying to make sense of a fractured family life due to her narcissistic parents.

I've been rather busy with work and reading this in fits and starts. The dense language and strange pacing evoke the meandering thought process of a child, and yet make reading difficult. This is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination and quite possibly my least favourite James novel. Maisie's tale is probably rather familiar to many broken families these days and far more common than I imagine would have been the case in 1897 when it was first published.

Maisie's parents have divorced and Maisie spends her time divided between both households. Her father re-marries her governess - hello cliche - or shades of Affleck (allegedly). Her mother is equally frightful and yet manages to ensnare a new lover in the form of Sir Claude, who seems to have a real rapport with the young child. When Sir Claude and Maisie's former governess end up cheating on their respective partners with each other, brought together in some part by their interactions about the child, things get very messy.

As for the rest, I'm sure I can leave it to you to explore the sub 300 pages for yourself. It certainly makes for an interesting comparison with the cinematic outing. The film from 2012 has been modernised and is perhaps therefore much more easy to access and relate to. Both share, at their centre, the innocent upbeat perspective of a young child attempting to make sense of a complicated adult world. I'd be interested to re-read the novel when I've got more dedicated time because I think that my review might be bumped up another star in that instance.


4 out of 5 stars from this precocious kid.

Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse

"I had no real feeling for her, but there was some kind of pain when she went away, and when the pain yielded nothing, I converted it, like an alchemist busy with the seaweed, into something approaching love."

Considering how slight a volume this novel is, it was rather surprising how long it took me to finish. There was something rather discouraging and demoralising about the story of a young man who dreams of a scriptwriting career with a comedian, leads women on left right and centre and just basically achieves nothing.

Recycling the same engagement ring to get his way, with no intention of follow through, Billy Liar is not exactly the most reliable character.

An atmosphere of futility and disappointment is not a place I'd really choose to dwell and hence my lack of passion for this story. There is a sense that Billy would be just as home today on Tinder, making up stories and headed around in circles.

3 out of 5 day dreamers finish last. 

London Fields by Martin Amis

" Love can make a woman pick up a bus, or it can crush a man under the weight of a feather. Or it just lets every­thing go on as it was yes­ter­day and will be to­mor­row. That's the kind of force love is."

Being one of those people that has to read a novel before it gets a cinematic outing, and given that this novel was due for a big screen rendition, I was destined to check it out. I felt like I needed a shower after I finished it. There's something grubby about Amis, and quite possibly a little misogynistic. Keith Talent really grossed me out. Paying for sex with a minor is just one of his disgusting outlets. Nicola Six just didn't seem real. She appears almost like the construct of a man who feels that women are both attractive and yet repulsive. Portions of the writing are well rendered and that is all that I have that is positive to say.

2 out of 5 times I felt tainted

The Return of The Soldier by Rebecca West

" So Kitty lay about like a broken doll, face downward on a sofa, with one limp arm dangling to the floor, or protruding stiff feet in fantastic slippers from the end of her curtained bed; and I tried to make my permanent wear that mood which had mitigated the end of my journey with Margaret "

A harrowing look at the after effects of war that is brilliantly rendered. You can really feel the emotions here giving a sense of the contemporary to a book that was published in 1918.

Before PTSD was a commonly known phenomenon, particularly in relation to the horrors of war, this gives an insight into the impact on the loved ones waiting at home for their returning warriors.

The narrator, is the cousin of the returning soldier, who sees first hand the outcome of the return of her shell shocked cousin, Chris, from the battlefield on his family. Kitty, Chris' wife, has struggled with stoicism through the lack of communication from the front and is initially incredulous that her loving husband can no longer remember she exists.

Beautifully written and moving, it is amazing that so much emotion can be derived from such a short story that still retains its resonance today.

 5 out of 5

One Day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"Then Shukhov asked his wife to explain to him how he, who'd never been able to draw in his life, was going to become a painter".

What does it say about my week at work that spending time in a Stalinist era prison would be a welcome escape from everything else that was going on? Stodgy stew, or the lack of it, bread crust spoons, this is quite literally a day in the life.

Like Orange is the new black but without the girl on girl romps.

I don't know but I had put off reading this for quite some time, thinking it might be a little depressing, as it turns out this was the week to crack the spine. Nothing like  a little dose of misery to make one's own dramas seem easy to deal with. 

The contrast between the cold requiring special knee high boots versus the lovely weather we are having at present, made it all the more bearable.

 4 out of 5 prisoners lead a pretty horrid existence.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

"The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities, neither was Mr Stryver, always fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race."

Dear Mr Charles Dickens, it is such a puzzlement to me that it has taken so many years for us to become so well acquainted. Your stories are so entrenched in popular culture that they appear strangely familiar, for I 'dreamed a dream of days gone by' that Madame Defarge was knitting in Les Mis but clearly my cultural references were all askew.

I wonder whether my new found love of Charlie D (as I've decided to call him)  stems from:

 a) the awe inspiring address of Simon Callow that I had the pleasure of hearing on the subject of his brilliance - Dickens that is - not Callow - who is nonetheless quite brilliant; 

b) the wisdom of approaching middle age (highly doubtful with my Peter Pan-like tendencies - is there a female version?) or;

 c) my recent masters course of the legal persuasion - no one writes about the law like Dickens - he so beautifully captures the potential injustice of justice and the true financial burden and mental cost of protracted cases. 

Perhaps it is a mixture of all three and might I add, that this particular offering is delightfully slim in volume. I'm not 'fat-ist' but Dickens can tend to occupy a decidedly large portion of your life should you pursue some of his more weighty tomes and this  exists as a tasty morsel - much like A Christmas Carol  - bite sized chunks of brilliance for your brain to savour.

Fair warning, dear reader, the plight of the good Doctor Manette, his daughter, her husband and Mr Lorry is bound to draw you in and you may, like me, find yourself closing the final chapter in the wee hours of a school night. Needless to say work was frightful the next day and yet, I felt privileged to have lived through such upheaval in two great cities. I think the opening sentence retains such resonance because the present time is always the best and the worst of times and the equally famous final sentence, chock full of self sacrifice reminds us that in crazy times when the world  is a scary uncaring place, there are still good people who put the needs of others first. That, despite the horrific Defarge couple, is a reassuring takeaway in a world where civil unrest and torment is still an every day occurrence in much of the world.

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to each other" - well isn't that a timeless turn of phrase in a hands-off digital world?

5 out of 5, a classic for a reason and perhaps the real reason why I'm hopeless at knitting.

The Human Stain by Philip Roth

"It was about midway into his second semester back as a full-time professor that Coleman spoke the self-incriminating word that would cause him voluntarily to sever all ties to the college-  the single self-incriminating word of the many millions spoken aloud in his years of teaching and administering at Athena, and the word that, as Coleman understood things, directly led to his wife's death."

 

Dense, unflinching and delivered at a rapid fire pace, the language of this novel is expertly crafted and draws the reader into the troubled world of ageing academic, Coleman Silk. The victim of a campaign purporting to out his racism and based solely on the misunderstanding of one word during a lecture, Coleman's inability to combat the accusation changes his life.

 

In his later years, Coleman is reinvigorated by his affair with illiterate janitor, Faunia. Her backstory is violent and paved with sexual abuse, heartache and disaster. Their unlikely relationship makes for compelling but often times disturbing reading. The physicality of their relationship engenders between them an atmosphere of trust that draws out Colman's deepest, darkest secret. A secret that will not stay hidden for such secrets leave behind a "human stain".

 

Midway through the book, I was sure that I would mark it around the 4 mark, but the emergence of the  voice of Nathan Zuckerman, the author of the story within the novel, towards the end made me reconsider. 5 out of 5.