Beloved by Toni Morrison

"All the time, I'm afraid the thing that happened that made it all right for my mother to kill my sister could happen again."

The week when work dramas and social chaos are pushing you towards some pretty silly behaviour is really not the week to appreciate a novel about slavery and killing kids and rape and other unsavoury things. I say this, by way of explanation, as I felt a little overwhelmed this week and reading this novel did nothing to help. In fact its style was so creepy and frustrating that even when horrific events happened in the novel I had some kind of delayed onset reaction to them. I was drowning in words and every now and then my head would hit the surface and think, crumbs, why am I reading this?

The answer would be, perhaps, that it is included on almost every must read list there is. How could I resist the siren call of a novel that is on almost every must read list? I couldn't. I succumbed and yet I didn't really enjoy or appreciate the experience. Upon reflection, I can appreciate its brilliance and originality. The tone and phrasing are something new to me and  only really reveal themselves as being memorable when revisiting the novel, days and dramas later. There's something wafting and dream like about it, the kind of dream that swings continually into nightmare territory. When is the perfect time to read an unsettling piece of literature? I wonder?

4 out of 5, sometimes you just have to take the unpleasant path.

Under the Skin by Michel Faber

"Already he looked much like all the others she had picked up; later, when his clothes were off, he would look more or less identical."

I've avoided reading this for quite some time and I have no idea why. This is one of those rare instances where I watched the film before reading the novel and I'm slightly miffed because I was haunted by Scarlett Johanssen and a little too aware of what was really going on. Both the novel and the film are excellent and if you've not encountered either, I think perhaps, as is usually the best bet, go for the book first.

So how to discuss the novel without giving too much away. It is rather difficult. Potential spoilers coming. There is this fascinating juxtaposition of the way we treat dogs versus cattle and they way (spoiler alert) the aliens harvest their human meat. The alien identifies as human and the locals as lower life forms. Her reaction to sheep is particularly interesting. 

Apart from harvesting lonely, male, hitchhikers,the protagonist wrestles with her transformation to fit in with the locals - the overblown boobs based upon a local magazine ( I think we know which kind), the mutilation of her natural form and the troubling feelings that immersion with the vodsels have evoked.  Faber has this amazing way of humanising the aliens and by doing so, causing the reader to think closely about what it means to be human.

Good news also that this is another tick on the 1001 list and the guardian list. Yes, I'm list mad, you should know that by now.

5 out of 5 - A thrilling read.

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

"I haven't killed anybody for years and don't intend to."

If you seek some relaxing holiday reading, then The Wasp Factory, should probably not be your first port of call. Teenager Frank, is, quite frankly not what he seems except to the extent that he is a nasty piece of work. It’s not often that a protagonist begins his tale with claims of committing the murder of three children before the age of ten.

Set in a strange desolate, Scottish Island, the novel reeks of death, the unknown and a sense that the world has just all gone wrong. Perfect reading for this miserable age, perhaps that’s why I finished it towards the end of 2016. I know my reviews are a little behind.

Frank’s older brother, Eric, is another frightful character who escaped from a mental institution after having lost the plot, quite understandingly, when he tries to feed a brain damaged baby, missing a skull cap, whose brain is being attacked by maggots. Oh Sorry, that should have come with a “don’t read this line before lunch” warning.

I don’t want to give the game away as to what actually transpires at the end, other than it was unexpected and enhanced my perception of the novel as a whole. The author reflected on his work as a way of publishing his writing and passion for Science Fiction by considering the Scotland of his youth as a jumping off point.

“In the end I went for something that kept me closer to my by-then comfort zone: a first-person narrative set on a remote Scottish nearly-island told by a normality-challenged teenager with severe violence issues allowed me to treat my story as something resembling SF” 

Particularly of interest was his commentary that the book was -

“supposed to be a pro-feminist, antimilitarist work, satirising religion and commenting on the way we're shaped by our surroundings and upbringing and the usually skewed information we're presented with by those in power”

which makes it firm fodder for a post-Trump world where fake news is part of the daily narrative.

The novel’s extreme violence within the constraints of childhood makes for confronting reading and yet anyone who has been bullied at school knows how evil other children can be. Banks further posited that he 

“was also trying to make the point that childhood innocence isn't - and wasn't - as most people seem to imagine it; children probably harbour quite as many violent thoughts as adults, they just don't usually possess a sophisticated moral framework within which to place them”.

I’m not sure the sophisticated moral framework helps that much, as I read the news sometimes I think we are living on that island populated by crazy kids with guns, trying to be something they’re not and wreaking havoc on the planet. On that dire note I think I need a lie down. 

4 out of 5 ways to put a dampener on your holiday cheer.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another?

Take a trip into a strange dreamlike world of missing cats,war, sexually suggestive phone calls and frantic attempts to connect with other human beings in a meaningful fashion.

This was the perfect novel for a long, long, long haul flight home. Actually I finished it on the first leg. What can I say, I was engrossed.. heck I also finished watching 4 movies (at least).

Murakami takes the everyday, the mundane events, and transforms them, highlighting the weird and other worldly moments that cross our paths. There is something deeper and ultimately human about what he brings forth and it is both amazing and entertaining, while simultaneously real and unreal.

This book calls to mind primal urges and fundamental concerns that lie behind our everyday thoughts and actions. Yet, to describe it thusly,does it somewhat of a disservice, because it is also restrained and constrained and beautiful.

Life is a constant battle of trying to encapsulate our feelings, our senses, our emotions and thoughts into easy to deal with segments, a battle which we are unlikely to overcome. Will we ever truly understand other peoples' thoughts and motivations when our own are an indecipherable puzzle that constantly taunts us?

Knowing that we are not alone in this journey of unending questions that will never be thoroughly answered is something this book delivers; well that was my takeaway in any case.

A jazz riff on unemployment, human relations, thoughts,emotions, feelings and everything in between. Read it and let me know your thoughts, I'm eager to hear.

5 out of 5 windup birds swoop and soar.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“What if today’s essentially irrelevant occurrence – what if  all this is only the beginning, only the first meteorite in a whole series of rumbling, burning rocks, spilling through infinity  toward our glass paradise?”

Every now and then, as a reader, you discover a perfect book. Something dangerous, something that makes you think, something that makes you feel; most importantly something that makes you question.This, is one of those books.

It is expertly crafted and tantalisingly develops its strange plot. Mathematics is the answer to everything and everyone is designated by a letter and a number. Sex is something that requires a pink ticket and zero emotion, imagination can be removed by surgery and the One State controls all.

A precursor to George Orwell's dystopian view, it is incredulous to me that this novel which seems so contemporary was written way back in 1921. Now that I've read it, I really want to re-read it - which is really unusual for me.

5 out of 5 totalitarian regimes end in revolution

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

"He had been car­ry­ing con­doms around for years and had never used one of them—after all, whores al­ways had their own."

I'm pretty sure I once swore off reading any more Houellebecq after The Possibility of an Island,  but my commitment to making  a dent into the 1001 novel list meant that wasn't on the cards. How to summarise this book, hmm.... sex and death.

I finished it more depressed than when I opened it and I'd had a pretty ordinary day at work.

Here is a novel that explores the endless possibility ignited by sexual awakening, the guilt, the weirdness and it's inevitable climax in the loss of fecundity, and the rot of old age. Disease, flabby skin and inability to perform set the horrendous scene of the outlook of post middle age. Perhaps if I was younger I would look more favourably on this book given that it is written with dexterous skill; but man, it was just a major buzz kill.

Houellebecq does have an amazing and visceral way with words, I think I just needed something a little bit more upbeat this week, something happier than loose lady bits, ineffectual orgies and messed up relationships - I'm talking about the book people - minds out of the gutter. That being said, if any of these subjects appeal, then knock yourself out reading this one.

3 out of 5 things get worse with age apparently

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

"She had a brisk air of bristle, like a terrier bitch. There was ex-whore written all over her."

Despite what amounts to a very cool looking cover and the fact that I've really enjoyed some other works by the same author; this one just really didn't do it for me. Perhaps it was the continued weirdness, yes , I get that its fantasy but the cockney feathered lady was just a little bit too much for me, never mind the other weird characters.

I have to say, I find the idea of the circus repugnant and I'm never sure why. Other people I know marvel at Cirque de Soleil, but for me the circus is to theatre as porn is to movies. Sure its filmed the same way, but it leaves you feeling a bit dirty and the stars strike me as something tainted. It's a personal bias but one that probably drives my inability to engage with this novel.

It also doesn't help that Jack comes across as such a hopeless sap. I prefer a male protagonist that is a bit more together than this love sick pup who at times really loses it 'cock a doodle doo".

2 out of 5, I'm scared of clowns

Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness



A mystical looking cover for a magical book



  "For us to meet sexually would be for us to meet once more as aliens. We had touched, in the only way we could touch. We left it at that. I do not know if we were right.”

 

I have really enjoyed all the Ursula Le Guin novels that I have had the priviledge to read to date. This critically acclaimed novel exploring the political machinations of a far away planet peopled with ambisexual beings makes for a compelling read. The people of Gethen are completely uninterested or motivated by sex except for certain times of the month where, coupled up, their bodies take on traditional male or female roles in order to procreate. The fact that anyone could potentially become pregnant encourages a society of equality and these social aspects make for an interesting speculation.

That having been said, it is the story of Genry, the envoy from outerspace, that is at the core of the story. The fish out of water must come to terms with a society that is so different to the one from which he hails, with the central tension of whether he will survive his efforts to convince the Gethenians to join the Ekumen ( a conglomerate of 83 worlds).

 

I am certainly not alone in my praise for this book, since its publication in 1969, it has garnered significant accolades including winning the 1970 Hugo Award and the 1969 Nebula award. I was drawn to it by its inclusion on countless must read lists including the 1001 books to read before you die, The Guardian's 1000 novels you must read, Bloom's western canon and pringle's 100 top science fiction novels.