Housekeeping

No this is not a novel on cleaning, however it may as well have been. Written by Marilynne Robinson it has the tagline (if books have taglines) of being one of the Observers greatest 100 books which for me is usually a good thing. A lot of people don't like award winning books or critically recognized ones but that's how I usually find something to read so I was looking forward to this one. Sadly however I can't say I understood it, the prose is rather dense (to put it mildly) and full of similes and metaphors predominantly concerned with water, as a lake seems pivotal to the whole story. Normally I don't really mind that style of writing but I just didn't have much patience for it this time. Synopsis time! Set in Fingerbone, which I can only assume is the 'sticks' of America, it concerns itself with the Fosters and primarily the two sisters Ruthie and Lucille. Their mother Helen killed herself much in the way of Thelma and Louise after leaving the two girls with her mother and hence their grandmother (the grandfather died years ago in an accident involving a train and the lake in Fingerbone). They are raised by a succession of members of the family until their Aunt Sylvie returns to Fingerbone and the rickety old family house. Then it gets a bit more interesting. Mainly because Sylvie is a bit more interesting, in the sense that she's a bit odd, she's lived as a vagrant for years and habits from that lifestyle have carried over to the more domesticated setting of a house. Ruth who narrates the tale finds she has much in common with Sylvie, both awkwardly tall, socially dysfunctional and really happier alone together than with friends and such things. Lucille however like most teenagers is solely concerned with what other people think, is ashamed and embarrassed by her odd Aunt and distances herself from her sister at school cause she just wants to fit in and live a 'normal' life eventually moving in with one of her teachers. The authorities try to take Ruth away from Sylvie but they make off in the night crossing the train tracks over the lake and essentially live happily (well as happily as inherently sad people can be) ever after in their vagabond shoes. That's about it. It's a short book but took me forever to read I didn't much enjoy it and it was never easy. I kept having to read the same bits over and over just could not get into it. I think part of the problem was that I was trying to rush through it as i've a class next week about the master and margarita, which I haven't yet read and I probably should have started that instead of trying to squeeze this book in too. With a bit of effort and patience I imagine I would have enjoyed this novel it's really quite philosophical and read at a more leisurely pace it might prove to be a lot better but as it stands right now I pretty much hated it.

Music for torching

OH MY GOD is exactly what I said to my empty living room when I finished reading this novel by A.M. Homes. After Revolutionary Road and Little Children this is the third successive novel i've read dealing with suburban life in America. Paul and Elaine this time are the unhappy couple and a little bit crazy, certainly depressed, completely selfish, mostly unlikeable and somehow and i've no idea how but Homes makes you care about these two strangely believable characters. The story starts when they burn down their house on a whim, seemingly just for the craic by kicking over the barbeque. The house isn't completely destroyed just some superficial damage and a hole in the dining room wall. They end up staying at Pat and Georges house, Pat being the stereotypical stepford housewife who isn't as most people aren't, all that she seems (it is very funny and very weird when that little plot thread comes to a head) and their two kids Sammy and Daniel are shipped off to two friends house (Sammy staying with Nate the son of Mrs Apple, one of the women Paul is having an affair with, and Daniel with the Meaders who are the traditionally normal family but seem kind of odd against the cacophony of strange characters we meet). The rest of the story then deals with this anything but normal family attempting to get back to normal, to rebuild and improve their house and well lives too. I think this novel is about how people are never who they portray on the surface and that really everyone is a little bit crazy but even if it's about nothing but an entertaining story then that's more than enough. Homes writes the kind of things other people are afraid to say out loud and she writes it well. I have a sad little confession, when I read a book I write down the sentences/quotes I particularly like. I couldn't do that with this novel, because I pretty much particularly liked every line in it. It's very funny, it's very dark, it's very twisted and it's very excellent. It may not be to everyones liking however, I imagine a good barometer would be if you like American Beauty then this you will love. Finally, I wished more books had endings like this one, she's some writer. If the one advantage of being dark and twisty is getting to love novels like this then I say embrace the dark and twisty, it's occasionally worth it.

Little Children

So my back is getting sore and my mum's dogs want to play with me (or more likely they just want fed) so this review is going to be pretty short although I don't have that much to say about this novel by Tom Perrotta. Sarah, a young mother, rather intelligent, someone probably more suited to an academic career than stay at home mum is married to Richard a weird middle aged man with something of a porn fetish. She has essentially a summer affair with the 'prom king', Todd, an unfeasibly handsome house husband she meets at the park. There's other subplots, most notably the child molester who moves to the neighbourhood that summer and it's an easy enough read. There's more to the story than my outline would suggest but I just didn't care enough about the characters to rattle on about it, it's not a bad book, parts of it even verge on gripping but maybe it's because I just read revolutionary road another novel set in the suburbs that really was excellent (really give it a read) that this one just paled in comparison. It's ok but there's better novels to read than this one, resoundingly average, 3 stars. P.S this is one of the rare occasions i'd say just watch the film instead, although the joy that is Kate Winslet is far too pretty to be playing Sarah. Still it has Kate Winslet which is the main thing, and this novel does not.

Revolutionary Road

Set in the 1950s this novel written by Richard Yates is quite something. It deals with the tale of April and Frank Wheeler, a young married couple, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs and from the outside it all seems pretty great but the problem is they thought they were destined for greater things. They think they are the interesting couple, deep thinking, more intelligent and really when it comes down to it better than their neighbours, not that they are outwardly snobbish. It's the internal dialogue between the couple that tells us this primarily. Frank in particular though is quite self aware and is very conscience of portraying himself in a certain way so people see him as attractive, this original first rate mind (he even does this with his wife April). He talks a lot, and I mean a lot, and all of what he says is obviously in his mind so well constructed and important that everyone should be in awe of him. There's a little bit towards the end when April says 'Oh, Frank, you really are a wonderful talker. If black could be made into white by talking, you’d be the man for the job.' and taken out of context it's sounds like a compliment but it comes in the middle of an argument where April has had enough of all the talking and you're rooting her on, cause by this stage as a reader you've had enough of him too. The two main characters in this are brilliantly written, the entire book is in all honesty, with April becoming increasingly sympathetic while Frank runs the other way and becomes more and more unlikeable. Their relationship, never exactly on an even keel really falls apart when April suggests they up and move to Paris, to give Frank a chance at finding out what he wants to do while she'll take on highly paid secretary work to support the family. Initially Franks all for it but in the end for someone apparently miserable in his job, who has conformed to an existence thats all a bit run of the mill and not as extraordinary as would befit a man like him he doesn't have the courage to change but then again I don't imagine many would. I don't know if I would. But I do know the way he gets out of it can't be described in any other way but horrible. April is who you feel sorry for, she's trapped in this life and unlike Frank she is willing to do something about it, to not settle for this existence of suburban banality, but she put her faith in a man who as it turns out was all just talk, and that was the undoing of them, all the talk. The story is many things, it's a satire on suburban life, it's the american dream gone wrong, it's a relationship coming apart and it's the tragic story of April Wheeler subtly building to its sad, abrupt but always inevitable conclusion. I couldn't recommend this book more, i've a habit of thinking the thing i'm reading is the best book i've ever read (not always but often enough)so i'm not going to say this is the best book i've ever read but part of me thinks it might be.

The Reader

I love Kate Winslet. I do, I think she's a bit great so this is the first of my three 'Kate Winslet books', not of course that she wrote any of them, it's just that she's starred in their adaptation. The book was written by Bernard Schlink. Set in Germany in the 1950s it spans 40 years of the narrator, Michael Bergs life. We meet him at 15 where a chance encounter with a young woman Hannah Schmitz has a greater impact on his life than he could possibly imagine. The novel is divided into three parts and it starts off as a love story, Michael falling head over heels for this relatively older woman and they commence a brief affair and we learn about Hanna through Michael, she likes to be read to, she seems to be a bit temperamental and can be both affectionate and stand-offish, sometimes within the same sentence. Then one day she has gone, abruptly packed up her life without a word, leaving Michael devastated. In the second part Michael is now at university studying law, and as part of his classes he attend a trial investigating the involvement of several women guards at Nazi war camps and in a tragic incident involving a number of prisoners locked inside a burning church. It is revealed Hannah is one of the guards under trial and that's when it gets interesting. Because this revelation leads us to one of the main issues in the novel, that for the generation of post war Germans who in Michaels case fell in love, or where taught or where brought up my people who where directly or indirectly involved in the crimes perpetrated during the German war effort their feelings are thrown into turmoil, the shame or guilt to fall in love with someone who may have committed atrocious crimes or to be faced with the realisation that maybe your parents who brought you up and taught you right from wrong, stood by and did nothing would throw your moral certainty into a fair amount of disarray. As the trial progresses the actions of Hanna are explained by a secret of hers, that would although not absolve her guilt it would at the least lessen her charges however she is too ashamed to admit and it seems Michael is the only one that has figured it out, her past actions in their relationship helping him come to the realisation. He toys with talking to the judge but in the end doesn't feel it's his right to reveal something Hanna so clearly doesn't want divulged even though she maybe can't see what the consequence of keeping it to herself would have. The final part brings us to Michael with a failed marriage and a daughter, a man who has never really been able to get over Hanna, in two senses I suppose both the whole being unable to love someone like he loved her and the shame of having loved someone who could commit such atrocities , someone he can't forgive but can't forget or leave behind. He ends up sending her tapes of him reading to prison and it is actually very touching. The end I found terribly sad and this book will stay with me for a long time. I guess it's my feelings about Hanna in particular, if you heard her crimes without any background information you'd immediately condemn her, she'd be a monster but I felt a lot of pity for her, in many ways I found her the most likeable character in the novel she was just a regular citizen and she was doing her job not that i'm saying that makes what happened during the war OK. Obviously there where Nazis who where sick individuals and the crimes committed in the holocaust are horrific but we can't just make sweeping generalizations that all Germans in that period of time where monsters. To forgive is too much but if you put yourself in those regular citizens shoes you can see, or maybe its just me, but it would be difficult to know what you would do. I highly recommend this novel, it is written well, not spectacular, but it's how Schlink deals with the subject that is the bit that got me. Bonus review: The film adaptation of this is excellent, minor bits of the story are changed but overall it is very true to the book and I would have to say one of those rare occasions where the film is on par with the novel. Plus Kate Winslet is in it! (and she got an oscar for it)

Beyond Black

Hilary Mantel has gotten a bit of a reputation for being a great author (she's won two bookers which is a fairly significant literary award and not a huge amount of people have won two so it's a pretty big deal) so I decided I wanted to see what the fuss was about and opted for this novel (which I chanced upon in my favourite second hand book shop, it contains thousands of books stacked to the ceiling and i've spent many a happy afternoon trawling for bargains there. If you should ever be in Belfast I would absolutely recommend a visit). In this novel we meet Alison, a morbidly obese, kind hearted psychic who seems to genuinely be able to contact/be contacted by the dead. Colette is a thin, mean woman who turns to psychics during the failure of her marriage and winds up becoming Alison's assistant or as she prefers to be referred, her manager. And along with Morris, Alison's spirit guide who is nasty in every sense of the word they travel around london holding psychic fairs where Alison passes on messages from the dead to the audience. The story is Alison's and as we get further into the book it becomes apparent Alison, had a terrible childhood, her mother essentially a prostitute had all sorts of horrible men around the house, men who kept dogs for fights, petty thieves, basically an unscrupulous bunch with abuse more than hinted at, she also had to deal with the onset of her psychic abilities at a young age with the dead wanted to find other people that had passed they had known. So all fairly traumatic then, Mantel intersperses the traumatic bits with humour though, it's quite a dry dark humour which suits me right down to the ground. The development of Colette and Alison's relationship in particular had many laugh out loud moments, Colette is as it turns out really quite a hard hearted woman who becomes more and more controlling and nasty to Alison, putting her on a diet, rationing her toast, and there ends up being very little to like about her whereas Alison becomes an increasingly sympathetic character. We watch as the novel progresses Alison having to deal more and more with her past, which is literally haunting her, Morris having a link to the men from her childhood and spending his time looking for his these men, his old mates. It's about then dealing with your past then really, Alison having to deal with these old spirits, the way you or I might have to confront bad memories in order to move forward. Mantel lives up to all the hype, she's a terrific writer and this was an enjoyable novel, for all the ghosts it contains it is not a ghost story so if you read it don't approach it looking for a scare, it is creepy in parts but it's lots of other things too. 4 out of 5.