Contemporary Reads: Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go (2005) is the latest novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It is the first novel by him I have read and got mixed feelings about it.

The book's premise is very interesting: in modern-day England, individuals are cloned with the purpose of using their clones to donate healthy organs. The narrator Kathy H. tells us about her upbringing in Hailsham (a school for cloned children) and her youth. The slow realization of what she and her friends were, the distorted vision of the outside world are very insightful. Once grownups they'll all be destined to become donors although some of them, like Kathy, will become carers for a few years first.

There are some rumours that the couples who are in love might be able to optain a deferral. However, towards the end of the novel we discovered that this was not so.

I find it hard to appreciate Ishiguro's style. His prose is plain but, unlike Orwell's, I found it so uninteresting I just wanted to get through the book as quickly as possible. A page-turner, certainly, but not in a good way.

Contemporary Reads: The Blind Assassin

After just a few pages, reading The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood turned into a near complusion. The prose just flows and this fantastic and unpredictable stroy of sisters Iris and Laura Chase is seems so effortlessly told.

There is a novel within the novel, entitled also The Blind Assassin about the secret relationship between a science-fiction writer and, we suspect, a married woman. For most of the book, I (and I'm sure most readers) thought this was an autobiographical accout of Laura's life.

The other parts of the book are made up by Iris's account on her life written for the benefit of her long lost grand-daughter, Sabrina, and by the contents of newspaper cuttings which illustrate perfectly what Iris is telling her and us readers.

We learn much about Iris and Laura's life from the upbringing in a rich family and their young adulthoods. How Laura becomes besotted with a young pinko, Alex Thomas, and hides him at the family mansion when he is accused of burning down their factory. We learn about how Iris marries Richard Griffen to solve her family's money troubles. Iris is only 18 at the time and Winifred, an old friend of Richard's, becomes a suffocating and controlling fixure in her life. She soons give her husband a daughter, Aimee. After the death of her father (suicide?), Laura comes to live with her sisters in Toronto. She is soon sent into an institution allegedly suffering from mental problems. She escapes and disappears for a few years.

All along, we sense their is something missing, Iris is keeping something from Sabrina and us. She reveals all, though, in the last sections of the book.

Only when Iris writes about her reunion with her Laura and her subsequent suicide (driving Iris's car off a bridge) on that same day do we find out the truth.

Laura had been living in Halifax all these years and had only come back to Toronto to await Alex's return from fighting in Europe. She explains that she had been pregnant when she was sectioned and had an abortion. All this had been orchestrated by Richard and Winifred. After hearing this, Iris reveals to her, that Alex died in Holland months ago and that she knows as she received a telegraph confirming this. She also reveals that she had been Alex's lover for a long time. At this point Laura makes off with Iris's car and ends up killing herself.

Before that, though, she manages to stop by Iris's house and leaves some note books. When Iris reads the notebooks she realises that Richard had beeded Laura and in fact the baby she had aborted was in fact Richard's. In turn, Iris's dauther Aimee was the issue of her relationship with Alex and not Richard.

Iris longs from her grand-daughter Sabrina to know all this. She has been brought up by Winifred as her mother Aimee was when she was taken away from Iris after her divorce from Richard.

A long family epic full of betrayal, secrets and longing excellently written by one of the most celebrated writers alive.

Other books I have read by the same author: The Robber Bride.

Contemporary Reads: The Accidental

The Accidental (2005) by Ali Smith is a dark, funny, dazzling novel. Every chapter is narrated by a different member of the Smart family or the stranger they let into their lives on a summer holiday in Norfolk, Amber -named after the Alhambra cinema she was conceived in.

The reader gets an insight into each character's personality, dreams and fears. Smith has managed to give them each their own distinct voice:

Astrid the 12 year old daughter: loves filming with her camera, is pretty much self-absorbed in her own world. Becomes besotted with Amber.
Magnus the teenage son: suspended from school as is involved in a bullying case which resulted in the victim's suicide. Becomes Amber's lover.
Michael Magnus's father and Astrid's step-father: English literature professor, womaniser who has affairs with her female students. The man who abhors clichés and yet manages to become one.
Eve mother, wife and fairly succesful author: suffers from writer's block and pretends not to know about her husband's escapades.
And, finally, Amber: we don't know much about her other than she manages to seduce all the Smarts somehow and is suspected of burglaring their London house.

Full of cinematic references from Bergman to Hitchcock via Richard Curtis, this book is original and daring and a damn good read.

If you want to read Jeannette Winterson's interview with the author, please click here

Modern Classics: The Passion

Set during the Napoleonic Wars, The Passion (1987) by Jeanette Winterson is not an historic novel. It is the product of a great imagination. It is the story of Henri and Villanelle - he from France, she from Venice. We follow their separate lives until they meet in Russia and together walk to Venice. We leave them when Henri is sent to a mental intitution for having killed Villanelle's husband and Villanelle has had Henri's child.

This magical book had me lost in it as one would get lost in the Venice, city of imagination, it describes.

Other books I have read by this author: Sexying The Cherry and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit.

Contemporary Reads: The Light of Day

In The Light of Day (2003), Graham Swift deconstructs what could have been a run-of-the-mill detective story to create an originally suspenseful novel. Although the love story between disgraced policeman cum private dick George and client Sarah is slightly unconvincing I found this book compulsively readable in the whole. It is, in fact, rather brilliant.

Contemporary Reads: The Master

The Master (2006) is a wonderful novel by Colm Toíbín. It is a fictional account of the life of author American Henry James. On this portrait of the writer Toíbín has beautifully painted we learn much about his relationships with friends and family members, most notably with his father, Henry James Senior, his sister Alice and his elder brother William.

James's sexuality remains a mystery. Toíbín is clearly interested in this theme and indeed explores throughout the novel - and perhaps hinting at homosexuality. There are other equally important themes which are perhaps better supported by biographical evidence. Many of the themes expored in this book are the themes that interested James himself and, indeed, were part of his own novels and stories: mostly Americans in Europe and the relationship between England and America.

This novel is achievement both stylistically and in terms of its subject matter and the research involved in writing it. A thorough pleasure to read.

Modern Classics: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel by George Orwell published in 1949. Like in Brave New World, we are confronted with a dystopic future. And like any dystopias, it is very much a product of its age: throughout the texts there are references the Nazi Germany and Communist China.

The setting of the novel is Oceania which is one of the three world powers - the others being Eurasia and Eastasia. Oceania is controlled by The Party whose leader Big Brother is worshipped. Oceanic society is a very rigid class-bound society where members of the Outer Party are controlled by those on the Inner Party and where citizens are systematically spied on to ensure to digression or unorthodoxy. History is permanently rewriting and generation after generation all knowledge of the past is being lost. The official language is Newspeak (a language designed to control its speakers) but English or Oldspeak is still the lingua franca. The country is permanently in war with either one of the other two world powers.

Winston Smith, the protagonist, is a rebellious man who falls in love with Julia and together they conspire for the end of The Party. Winston believes in a rebellion of the Proles who amount to 85 % of the population. However, both Winston and Julia are set up by Inner Party member O'Brien.

After their arrest they are subjected to tortures and interrogations. Any resistance is futile as the Inner Party has been spying on Winston for years and knows of all his crimes. Finally, he is taken to Room 101. In Room 101 each individual is confronted with his biggest fear. In Winston's case: rats. When at the room he shouts out that he'd rather they torture Julia instead of him, O'Brien returns Winston to his cell.

Once Winston is realised, he meets Julia who confesses she has been subjected to the same tortures and that she had also reacted in the same way. The novel ends with the sad realisation that the Party has successeded in controlling Winston's mind: he loves Big Brother.

Thanks to Orwell's wonderfully plain prose style and references to history and politics make this novel almost read like an essay. An very good essay on the politics of power. A must read.

Other books I have read by this author: Animal Farm.

Contemporary Reads: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) by Mark Haddon won several awards and was even shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize when it was first published. Its protagonist/narrator is Christopher who is an autistic boy. Christopher decides to write a murder mystery book when he finds out his neighbour Mrs Shear's dog has been killed. He starts investigating the 'murder' and recording his experiencies on this book. Everything we learn about Christopher's life is through him. This gives the reader a precious insight into the boy's pathos in such an effective way that I couldn't help being touched by everthing that happened to him throughtout the novel.
Chirstopher lives alone with his father in Swindon. His father has told him his mother had died in hospital of a heart attack. However, we soon find out that she is alive and lives in London. She had been having an affair with Mr Shear and had now moved in with him. She writes weekly letters to Christopher that his dad has been hiding and keeping until Chirstopher is older. It turns out that it was Christopher's father the one who killed Mrs Shear's dog in a fit of rage. These two revelations frighten Christopher and make him decide to ran away to his mother's.
This is one of the sweetest most moving book I have ever read. A great crossover success for children's author Mark Haddon.

Contemporary Reads: Vernon God Little

Vernon God Little (2003) by DBC Pierre is a laugh-out-loud satire of modern day media-obsessed America.

Vernon Gregory Little finds himself as the prime suspect of a high school masacre in Martirio, Texas. The perpetrator, Jesús Navarro, killed himself leaving Vernon to be apprehended as accessory to murder.

Vernon travels to Mexico but is betrayed by the girl who loves, Taylor Figeroa, who helps media man Eulalio Ledesma Gutierrez to set him up.

After a farcical court case, Vernon ends up in the Death Row although a last minute pardon will see him 'back to normal' at home at the end of the novel.

Using J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye as a template, DBC Pierre's comedy in his first novel comes mainly in the form of malapropisms (powerdime for paradigm, nancies for nuances, etc), an acute ear for the vernacular, and plenty of adsurd situations.

Great Classics: Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë is one of the greatest novels ever written in English. Its heroine is one of the most memorable literary characters of all time.

Orphaned as a baby, Jane Eyre is taken to live with her uncle John Reed's family. After his death, his widow, Mrs Reed, soon sends her to a boarding school, Lowood. Jane leaves the school years later to become a governess at Thornfield Hall.

There she teaches the French child, Adele, who is the daughter of a late lover of Thornfield Hall's owner Edward Rochester. Soon, Mr Rochester takes a shine to intelligent and passionate Jane.

Jane starts noticing something strange in Thorfield from the night she rescues Mr Rochester for a bed misteriously set on fire.

Jane takes leave for a few weeks to go and visit her dying aunt, Mrs Reed. From her sickbed, she confesses that she has always hated Jane because she reminded her of her sister-in-law (Jane's mother) to whom Mr Reed was devoted. She also confesses that Jane has another uncle, Mr Eyre, who is rich and lives in Madeira.

After, Mrs Reed's passing, Jane Eyre goes back to Thornfield. Mr Rochester proposes to her and she accepts. The night before the wedding, an intruder comes into Jane's bedroom and ruins her veil.

Jane's happiness is short lived for on her very wedding day a lawyer and Mr Mason appear to ensure the union does not take place. We discover that Mr Rochester married Mr Mason's sister in Jamaica many years back. It was all a plot against Mr Rochester divised by his late father and brother as Bertha Mason (for that is Mr Rochester's wife's name) is a dangerous mad woman. She has been kept locked up on the third floor of Thornfield for many years.

Jane flees and ends up living with a vicar, St John, and his two sisters. At first she adopts the alias Jane Elliot but is soon found out by the vicar. It turns out they are cousins and their tie is their uncle who has just died in Madeira leaving his £ 30,000 fortune to Jane.

Jane, who has never had any relations that loved her or any possessions, suddenly finds herself with three cousins and a fortune to her name. She shares her fortune with her newly found relatives.

She stays with them for a year before returning to Thornfield. The catalyst would be St John's marriage proposal which would involve going to India with him as a missionary. Initially Jane, realising that St John is not in love with her nor she in love with him, refuses to marry him although considers going to India with him. However, after a few conversations with her cousin she is willing to consider marrying him until she thinks she hears Mr Rochester calling her in the wind. She decides to seek Mr Rochester before giving St John a final answer.

Upon her return to Thornfield, Jane finds the house destroyed by a fire caused by Bertha and hears that she was killed and that Mr Rochester lost his sight during the incident.

When Jane and Mr Rochester finally reunite, he proposes to her for a second time. The novel ends with them married - Mr Rochester having got his sight partially restored - and Adele attending a good boarding school.

The story is told as an autobiograhy supposedly written 20 years after Jane and Mr Rochester's wedding. It is a riveting love story in its core that has captured the imagination of readers and writers alike for decades. It has been extensively adapted to cinema and television and it has also known many prequels, sequels and retellings in recent years.

Books for 2007

I have been asked to publish the list of books I intend to read in 2007 in advance. So far I have a pile of books on my desk that I intend to read (and write about) on the next few months. Here they are in no particular order:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

The Master by Colm Tóibín

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The Passion by Jeanette Winterton

The Light of Day by Graham Swift

At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O'Neill

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Accidental by Ali Smith

The Story of the Night by Colm Tóibín

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

As you can see, the list is quite varied and mainly reflects my personal interest in contemporary literature. Mostly, I will be reading 20th and 21st century books although readers will find the occasional 19th century novels like Jane Eyre.

This list is not intended to be a suggestion - I would never suggest books I haven't read. It is merely some information I was asked to make public by one of you.

Happy 2007 and happy reading!

Looking back: 2006

These are the best books I've read since August this year:

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The Hours by Micheal Cunnigham
Enduring Love, Saturday and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
Howards End by E. M.Forster

Contemporary Reads: Amsterdam

Amsterdam (1998) is the Booker Prize winner by Ian McEwan. A highly enjoyable novel set in contemporary Britain which, like all of the writer's novels I've read to date, is full of twists and doesn't disappoint.

Acclaimed composer Clive Linley and newspaper editor Vernon Hallyday have been friends for years. The novel starts with those two central characters assisting the funeral of their one-time lover Molly.

Molly had other lovers, among them the Foreign Secretary and would-be Prime Minister Julian Garmony a man for whom both Clive and Vernon share great contempt due his reactionary political ideas. Her late husband, George, is also held in contempt by them although in his case it is because he ended up with Molly.

Throughtout the novel, the friendship between Clive and Vernon is put on test several times: Vernon decides to publish pictures of Garmory in drag on his newspaper taken by Molly and sold by George. Vernon morally objects to this and makes his opinion heard by Clive. Secondly, while trying to compose his 'symphony for the millenium' in the Lake District, Vernon witnessed the rape of a woman but is reluctant to go to the police. Clive's paper has been following the rapist's story for months and he is enfuriated by his friend's attitude.

Clive is sacked from his newspaper for publishing Garmory's photos and Garmory's not only does not suffer from it but it away is enhaced. Vernon's symphony is set to open in Amsterdam when both friends reunite there. They end up killing each other by poisoning their drinks.

The brilliant thing about this ending is that it is totally unexpected and, at the same time, all the elements are there throughout the novel to make it the perfect ending.

Other books I have read by the same author: The Cement Garden, Saturday, Atonement, Enduring Love.

Contemporary Reads: Jack Maggs

Jack Maggs (1997) is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey. Set in 1987 London when Australia was a British penal colony where even petty thieves were sent to. Jack Maggs is one of such characters who, after being betrayed and sent to Australia comes back to England. Pretending to be a footman, he moves into Percy Buckle's house in London. His neighbour, novelist and mesmeriser Tobias Oates will soon reveal Magg's secrets and starts writing about him. Jack Magg has come back to London looking for a gentleman called Henry Phipps whom he regards as his son.

This is a worthy homage to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. An exciting historical novel and literary fantasy. Guilt, shame for crimes real or imagined and the two main themes of this masterly book.

Modern Classics: Good Morning, Midnight

Good Morning, Midnight (1939) by Jean Rhys was a book way ahead of its time. Its protagonist Sophia Jansen is an English woman in Paris. The facts that the heavy drinking protagonist is a woman and that the book largely narrates her sexual encounters and loneliness is what makes this book both very unusual for its time and so very relevant to ours.

This probably also accounts for its being overlooked until it was republished in the 1960s. Even today Rhys is better known for her prequel to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea.

Modern Classics: Brave New World

Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley is, like most science-fiction about the society of its day. It presents us with a dytopian vision of civilization where drugs and promiscuity abound and where the public is entertained by feelies - the equivalent to 1930s Hollywood talkies.

The novel is set on 632 years after Henry Ford brought us the first car manufactured solely by mass-production, Model T. The World State is a stable civilization where all citizens are test tube babies who are conditioned since infancy to take a determined place within society. World Controllers are ultimately in charge of this society where citizens are handed out a drug called soma and communal activities (including sex with as many partners as possible) are encouraged and where solitary pursuits have been abolished. All in the name of stability and happiness.

There exist Reservations where the indians live out of any contact with civilization. This among other reference seem evindence that Huxley got at least part of his inspiration in modern-day America, even though the book is largely set in England. One day, non-conformist Bernard takes, Lenina, a girl he is obscenely growing rather fond off - this is a world were monogamy does not even exist as a concept - to a Reservation. There they come across Linda who got lost many years before in a visit with the now World Controller, Mustafa Mond, and her son John (finding herself far from civilization she could not abort the child as any civilized girl would have done). John has a vision of the world he has obtained from reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare (something unthinkable in the World State) and listening to his mother's stories about civilization.

John and Linda are brough back to civilization. Linda dies soon after and after a confrontation with Mustafa, John settles down in the south of England as a hermitage.

Even though this novel is much less shocking now than I imagined should have been when it was first published, it is still a fascinating novel of ideas.

Great Classics: Howards End

Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster (1910) is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. As such, it has attracted a lot of attention from critics over the years and was made into a successful film in 1992. Some critics and general readers have felt uncomfortable by Forster's perceived elitism. Others have found the plot full of implausible coincidences. So let's start with the plot:

There are two families:

- The Schlegels: Margaret and her younger siblings Helen and Tibby.

- The Wilcoxes: Henry, Ruth and their children Charles and Paul.

The novel starts at the Wilcoxes' country house. Howards End, where Helen is a guest after the two families had met on holiday. Helen writes to her sister Margaret to announce her engagement to Paul. She writes then to explained the engagement has been called off as Paul is to set off for Africa. It is too late as Aunt Juley is already en route to Howards End to attempt to break off the couple to much embarassment.

Sometime later, the Wilcoxes will take an apartment opposite the Schlegels' residency in London. At the time, clerk Leonard Bast comes into the Schlegels' life when Helen accidentally purloins his umbrella at a concert.

Margaret becomes very close to the ill Ruth Wilcox and after the latter's death, she is bequeathed Howards End. However, Henry Wilcox does not carry out her late wife's wishes and does not even tell Margaret.

Years later, Margaret becomes engaged to Henry. Full of good intentions, Helen and Margaret try to help poor Leonard. However, some bad business advice given by Henry will see Leonard leaving his job at an insurance company for a worse paid one at a bank which he ends up losing.

Helen takes Leonard and his wife Jacky to the Wilcoxes' house in Oninton where it transpires that Henry and Jacky had an affair in Cyprus when Ruth was still alive. Margaret forgives this husband and decides to refuse helping Leonard by persuading Henry not to give him a job. Helen, thinking that Henry and not Margaret is behind this decision leaves England for Germany.

A few months later Helen comes back from Germany and Margaret discovers she is pregnant with Leonard's child. When both sisters are staying at Howards End, Leonard shows up, there is an altercation at his dies apparently of heart failure although Charles is condemmed to three years in prison for manslaughter.

Henry, Margaret, Helen and her baby end up living together in Howards End. Henry confesses to Margaret that Ruth had left her the house although this was never taken seriously by him because she had been too ill when she made her decision. He promises to leave the house to Margaret after her death and that Helen's baby must in turn inherit it.

So is the plot full of implausible coincedences? Yes, but I call that the artistic license. Is Forster an elitist? To use a very colloquial expression, so what if he is?

One of the truely important things about this book is the accurate and interesting portrayal Forster makes of the diverging forces at work in Edwardian England, represented by both families: The Wilcoxes are the Empire, capitalism, material progress and the Schlegels are Romantism, equalitarianism, social justice, culture. The abundant coincidences in the novel are the writer's intrument to bring us to the ending of the novel where both forces are finally reconciled.

Other books I have read about this author: A Room With A View.

Contemporary Reads: Austerlitz

Austerlitz is a strange novel. Its strangeness partly derives from its extremely long paragraphs, its pictures and its lack of chapters. But also, from the unnamed narrator about whom the reader will practically know nothing. This narrator will converse with Austerlitz over the years as the meet in different European locations such as Antwerpt, London or Paris.

We are told of Austerlitz's childhood in rural Wales where he was taken and fostered by a church minister and his wife before World War II. And we are also told about his youth and how he became interested in his origins only late in life. An only child of Jewish parents in 1930s Czechoslovakia, Austerlitz was sent to Britain by her mother, Agata, shortly before she was transported to Theresienstadt by the Germans. His father, Maximilian, was a Socialist politician who had settled in Paris. Most of this information Austerlitz obtains from his former neighbour and friend of the family, Vera.

This book is strange, moving and meticulously detailed.

Contemporary Reads: Beyond the Black

Beyond the Black is the most recent novel by British writer Hillary Mantel. Alison is a home counties medium tormented by the men of her youth (now in spirit). Colette becomes her live-in assistant after leaving her husband.

This book intruduces the reader in the world of mediums with an affectionate tone and a dose of black humour. The reader will discover the horrors of Alison's childhood: her mother was a prostitute who doesn't even kno who really fathered her child and her house was always full of disreputable men who abused her daughter. Alison castrated one of the men with a pair of scissors and took off someone's eye with a knitting needle. In adulthood, Alison tries to overcome her past by performing a good deed: sheltering homeless Mart in her garden shed.

After Mart commits suicide in the shed, Colette decides she can no longer live in the same house and work for Alison and, perhaps no quite surprinsingly, moves back with her husband after 7 years of separation.

The novel starts the summer Princess Diana dies and ends in the current climate of terrorism anxiety. I am not sure what Mantel was trying to achieve with the 7 year time span or the inclusion of events such as the death of the princess or September 11 but the novel is a good read.

Contemporary Reads: The Book of Evidence

Freddie Montgomery is the name of the narrator/protagonist of John Banville's novel The Book of Evidence. This book is his confession of the two crimes he committed, or is it. As it is all narrated on the first person in a highly subjective manner we never know how much of his account is real.

Freddie comes across as much remorseless as Albert Camus' Meursault in The Outsider. The first of his two crimes readers might feel inclined to pardon him for: stealing a Dutch painting that had belonged to his family until his mother ('the old bitch') sold it. His second crime, killing the maid who caught it in the act and his lack of repentance for her death make him one of the most despicable characters in literature.

This is a dark grim masterly written novel. It is the first of a trilogy: the other two books are Ghosts and Anthena.