Modern Classics: The Waves

Virgina Woolf described her book The Waves (1931) as 'playpoem' rather as a novel. It is in fact a highly poetical work and one of the essetial texts not only of Modernism but of English literature.

It is wise that readers follow Woolf's advice and approach this work as a poem. Once you accept that what you have on your hands is not a 'conventional' novel, reading it becomes a superbly rewarding experience.

Other books I have read by this author: Mrs Dalloway and A Room of One's Own.

Great Classics: Jude the Obscure

I have just finished reading Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895). I can see how this novel was shocking to the Victorians but I found Hardy's pessimism almost unbearable. Although I started off really enjoying the novel, and found Jude's character extremely interesting and complex after he elopes with his cousin Sue I just found myself reading gradually becoming more and more depressed.

I have recently bought a few Victorian novels that I intend to read over the next few weeks (perhaps months). I suppose I am trying to fill in the gaps of my education. In that sense, I am glad I've read Jude the Obscure.

Contemporary Reads: Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye (1988) was the ninth novel published by Margaret Atwood. It is a Bildungsroman charting the life of painter Elaine Risley.

This novel explores brilliantly the complex relationship between a bully, Cordelia, and her victim, Elaine. We also get to see how this relationship changes throughout the years from the victim's perspective. As with all books by Atwood I read to date, Cat's Eye does not fail to impress.

Other books I have read by this author: The Robber Bride and The Blind Assassin.

Great Classics: Silas Marner

Silas Marner (1861) is George Eliot's shortest novel. It tells the story of a lonely weaver in the town of Raveloe in the early 1800s.

Silas is a foreigner in the community. In his home town of Lantern Yarn, he had been a prominent member of a dissenting church until he is set up by a friend and falsely accused of stealing. When he settles in the village of Raveloe he leads a lonely existence until one night Dunstan Cass, son of a squire, steals his gold thus unleashing a series of events that will change his life.

When Silas announces that someone has stolen his life's savings, the village people rally around him and everyone starts seeing him in a different, more positive light. Soon after the theft, while all the prominent people, including Dunstan's brother Godfrey, are at a New Year's party, a stranger woman who is on her way to the village with her baby girl dies in the snow. The woman, called Molly, who we learn is addicted to opium is Godfrey's secret wife and the baby is his daughter. Silas finds them both and takes the baby to the party in search of a doctor. Even when he recognises the baby as his daughter and Molly as his wife, Godfrey does not own up to this and keeps it a secret for years while Silas raises the baby girl as his own. He names her Eppie (short for Hephzibah, his deceased sister's name).

16 years later, Dunstan is found dead and Silas gold is retrieved and return to its owner. Dunstan had died on the night he stole it. This discovery prompts Godfrey to confess his secret to his wife Nancy. The couple decide to go and see Silas and Eppie to reveal the truth and to propose they adopt the girl. Eppie is shocked to hear this and refuses to be adopted as she feels Silas to be her rightful father and does not want that to change. The novel ends with Eppie marrying Arron Winthrop.

This is a moral tale or rather an educating tale where love, loyalty and roots are important values. The reader will noticed that Silas is not a Christian, he does not celebrate Christmas or recognise Jesus. He will remain unconverted throughout the book. In fact, he changes very little, it is rather others' perceptions of him that gradually change after his gold is stolen and fatefully 'replaced' by an orphaned child.

Great Classics: North and South

North and South (1855) by Elizabeth Gaskell is a love story as much as a socio-political novel. Like most novels of its time it was originally published serialised. This accounts for its length and also for the fact that each chapter (there are 52 in total) ends with a cliffhanger.

The novel tells the story of how a Southern English family ends up living in the fictional Nothern industrial town of Milton (largely based upon Manchester). After Margaret Hale rejects a marriage proposal from Henry Lennox, she and her parents move up North from Hampshire when her father leaves the Church due to 'his opinions'. Her brother Frederick is living in Spain after having been expelled from the army after a mutiny he took part in. He cannot come back to Britain for fear of being recognised and hung.

A few chapters in, there is a shift from the idyllic discription of rural Southern England and its gentle society to the harsh, unrefined, industrial Milton. Mr Hale becomes the tutor of self-made man and factory owner John Thornton. Margaret also makes the acquaintance of ill ex-factory worker Bessy and her father Mr Higgins.

Throughout the ensuing chapters, Margaret begins to appreciate life in Milton and to understand its social workings. Some significant events take place: there is a big strike, Mr Thornton falls in love with Margaret and Bessy dies. Mrs Hale herself becomes very ill and asks Margaret to write Frederick a letter requesting he comes to England at once to see her.

Mrs Hale dies during Frederick's visit. When Margaret accompanies her brother to the train station and drunkard recognises him and Frederick pushes him to the ground before boarding his train. A few hours later, the drunkard dies. When the police comes round to see Margaret she falsely denies her being at the train station that evening. Mr Thornton stops the police enquiry after the death as he is aware of Margaret's involvement. However, he wrongly believes Frederick to be Margaret's lover and shares this with his mother.

This event takes John and Margaret farther apart as the former holds a low opinion of the latter and the latter feels obliged to keep her secret for her brother's sake. She is also tormented because of her lie and because she thinks John believes her to be a liar.

Mr Hale dies in Oxford while visiting his old friend and Milton man, Mr Bell. Before Mr Hale's passing, Mr Bell promises him he will look after Margaret as he had grown fond of her during a recent visit to the North. Margaret moves to London with Auntie Shawn, cousin Edith and her husband Captain Lennox and his brother Mr Lennox. She learns that Frederick has got married in Spain and does not wish to ever set foot in England again. Upon Mr Bell's death, Margaret becomes an heiress and, in a turn of fortune, John Thornton's landlady (or landlord as it says on the book).

Mr Higgins, who is now working for Mr Thornton, tells him the story about Frederick's visit years ago. Margaret's character is restored on John's eyes and he travels down to London for their reunion on the final chapters.

North and South, like all Victorian novels, is plot-heavy so I have left out many plot developments. I believe, however, that I have outlined the main ones of this great classic.

Contemporary Reads: The Story of the Night

The Story of the Night (1996) by Colm Tóibín is set in Argentina during the 1980s. Its protagonist and narrator is Richard Garay, a half English Argentinian young man living in Buenos Aires.

The novel is made up by three distinct parts:

Much of the first part is devoted to Richard's relationship with her staunchly English mother, his casual gay sex encounters in the city, and his work as an English teacher. One of his students is Jorge whose father Sr Canaletto fancies himself as candidate to the presidency. By the end of the first part, Richard meets Jorge's brother, Pablo, who has just come back from California after 10 years.

The second part gets really political and I found it really interesting. In this part, Richard and Pablo start a relationship. I particularly appreciated Tóibín's erotic writing which made their relationship really believable and touching.
The thrid and final part is quite harsh as it is when both lovers find out, separately and after they have broken up that have AIDS. After a chance meeting at the clinic they find out that they both have it and move it together again.

The book has certain inconsistencies and some of the episodes depicted somehow lack cohesion. However, I did not mind this much as the novel is so moving and shocking and truthful to the male gay experience that I would put it next to some of the novels by Edmund White, Allan Hollinghurst or David Leavitt.

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

Contemporary Reads: Life of Pi

Life of Pi (2002) by Yann Martel became an International publishing sensation after winning the Man Booker Prize. It tells the story of how an Indian teeneager, Piscine Molitor Patel or Pi, survived a shipwreck in the company of a Bengal tiger.

The book is divided in three parts:

- In Part I, we learn about Pi's upbringing in the Indian town of Pondicherry. His interest in religion will see him becoming a Christian and a Muslim while still remaining a Hindu. Aside from religion, his other main interest is animals (his family runs the local zoo). Later in life he'll major in religious studies and zoology.

- In Part II, the family decides to leave India to emigrate to Canada. They sail across the Pacific in a Japanese ship with most of the animals on board. Amid much confusion, before the ship sinks Pi is thrown into a boat and is, thus, the only survivor. The only human survivor, that is, since on the boat there are also a zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a tiger! Soon the hyena eats zebra and the orang-utan and the tiger eats the hyena. Both the Pi and the tiger hilariously known as Richard Parker survive for many months and after a brief sojour on a meerkat infested island they arrived to Mexico.

- In Part III, two members of the Japanese Ministry of Transport who find Pi's story unbelievable. So he changes it just by substituting the zebra by a Taiwanese salior, the orang-utan by his mother and the hyena by a French cook. Finally, the Japanese officials decide to stick to the story with animals and it is the one that 'sounds best'.

This is a highly imaginative and shocking novel.

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.