Girl, Woman, Other | Bernardine Evaristo #BookerWinner

I'm still trying to catch up on posts leftover from my magnificent Christmas reading binge.

Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel by Bernardine Evaristo is the final one. It is certainly not the least though. In fact, it very nearly overtook The Yield as my favourite book for 2019.

What stopped it from doing so?

Mostly time.

I have lived with and loved The Yield for many months now. It's wonderfulness has been a part of me for a much longer period of time than Girl, Woman, Other. It also has the advantage of being home grown. Poppy's very special Indigenous language dictionary is another stand out feature that I think about often.

But this is about Girl, Woman, Other and it definitely deserves it's own time in the sun to shine.

The twelve interconnected stories about growing up, living, working and loving in London by mostly black British women of various ages, had me hooked from the very first voice, Amma. Via these women, Evaristo talks about feminism, double standards, gender, racism, sexism and ageism.

The twelve chapters read like twelve separate portraits, with Evaristo revelling in the characterisations of each and every one. Her loose-flowing poetic prose was full of vitality and complexities. I was engrossed by each and every story, not wanting them to end, but then getting caught up in the next biography and wondering how they might interconnect.

The diversity and otherness suggested by the title, was explored on many levels. Part of my enjoyment came from reading such a fresh perspective and experiencing a reality different to my own. Note to self, read more diversely in 2020 (most of my 2019 reading was Australian and Indigenous).


Evaristo, herself, said:

I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which otherness can be interpreted in the novel – the women are othered in so many ways and sometimes by each other. I wanted it to be identified as a novel about women as well.

Finally, I will tackle the co-winning of the Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood's The Testaments. I have read both and enjoyed both, but Girl, Woman, Other is by far the richer, more interesting and certainly the more original of the two. Labelling a book 'the best novel of the year', obviously leaves things very open to individual interpretation, but to my mind, Girl, Woman, Other stands head and shoulders above any of the others shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and deserved to win in it's own right.

Facts:

• Joint Winner of the Booker Prize 2019
• Shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2019
• Named one of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2019

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Australia

In 1989 Saul Adler (a narcissistic young historian) is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is apparently fine; he gets up and goes to see his art student girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau. They have sex then break up, but not before she has photographed Saul crossing the same Abbey Road. Saul leaves to study in communist East Berlin, two months before the Wall comes down. There he will encounter - significantly - both his assigned translator and his translator's sister, who swears she has seen a jaguar prowling the city. He will fall in love and brood upon his difficult, authoritarian father. And he will befriend a hippy, Rainer, who may or may not be a Stasi agent, but will certainly return to haunt him in middle age. 

In 2016, Saul Adler is hit by a car on the Abbey Road. He is rushed to hospital, where he spends the following days slipping in and out of consciousness, and in and out of memories of the past. A number of people gather at his bedside. One of them is Jennifer Moreau. But someone important is missing. 

Slipping slyly between time zones and leaving a spiralling trail, Deborah Levy's electrifying new novel examines what we see and what we fail to see, until we encounter the spectres of history - both the world's and our own.

This is my second Deborah Levy story, so I now know that this style of writing - the slightly off-kilter structure, narration and characters combined with oodles of symbolism and mythology - is her usual way of telling a story. However, The Man Who Saw Everything isn't haunting me (yet) the way that Hot Milk still does, three years later.

Spectres of the past, though, are a big part of this story with personal and European histories haunting the daily lives of our characters. These ghosts of the past didn't get under my skin, like they did in Hot Milk. I suspect the reason lies in the face value issues on display in each book - Hot Milk was a mother/daughter passive/aggressive thing; The Man Who Saw Everything was more father/brother/son stuff with a narcissistic, self-absorbed narrator. Mother/daughter angst will always resonate here.

Saul is an historian of totalitarianism and the psychology of male tyrants. His research project is about the cultural resistance to Nazism in the 1930's. It is 1988, one year prior to the Wall coming down, when he leaves London (via Abbey Road) to go to East Berlin to work. He seems incredibly naive and light-weight to be tackling such a heavy topic.

His thoughts seem to be caught up in light-weight matters like tins of pineapple, photo shoots and who to kiss next. For Saul it is all about him. How he looks to others and what others think of him. His relationships are messy and confusing. He's aware of the Stasi and that they are probably watching him move around East Berlin, yet he is painfully careless with his actions and words.

Levy deliberately throws in the occasional confusing phrase or comment to make us wonder when or who is telling us this story and what is their purpose. Is this a rewriting of history, a whitewash? Or is this an attempt to uncover a truth?

I did not want to know, as well as wanting to. I could not break into her thoughts and feelings. Or my own, I could not break in.

Mostly though, this first half is a relatively straight forward Cold War drama which suddenly shifts in the second part, to 2016 Brexit London. Saul has been involved in a second accident on the Abbey Road crossing, this time more seriously. He is in hospital, coming out of a coma, surrounded by a confusion of visitors, real and ghostly.

I suspect this section is deliberately confusing for all of us. Was the 1988 story a dream? Has Saul been in a coma for 28 years? Or was he revisiting old haunts trying to piece together the story of how he ended up where he found himself in 2016? We all tell ourselves stories to make our lives more habitable. These stories are not only reinterpreted by our present understandings but our present is also influenced by our beliefs about our past. Levy seemed to enjoy poking holes into Saul's preferred story, until he was forced to face the inconsistencies. For a while anyway.

Sadly, for Saul, he failed to recover any degree of self-awareness. All his relationships continue to be messy and fraught with cruel comments and actions. Perhaps the damage of his childhood ran too deep. The early death of his mother combined with a strict disciplinarian, distant father and an elder brother who bullied him. Saul's fluid sexuality from a young age that only alienated his more conservative father and brother even more. They all processed their grief differently, but in ways that hurt each other - forever. 

Saul, our extremely unreliable narrator, was not the man who saw everything, Far from it. Saul could barely see anything beyond the end of his own, very pretty, nose. The man who saw everything was Walter Müller.

He was always looking at me and I think he could see everything that was good and bad and sad in me.

In 1988, Walter was smitten and then deeply hurt by Saul's careless love. He kept a safe distance thereafter, yet couldn't escape completely. Their lives were irrevocably intertwined and Walter was very, very careful to never reveal the full extent of their ongoing connection. Protecting others from the damage that Saul could do, became Walter's modus operandi.

Saul's Stasi report concluded with the phrase 'he is harmless to other people.' Walter, however, declared that this was false - he was, in fact, VERY harmful to others.

It is only as you make your way through the second part of the story that you begin to see all the red herrings and foreshadowing that Levy left behind in the first. It's like a puzzle that shifts and changes shape as you put it together. Saul is enigmatic to the end. A mystery unto himself and to others.

We are haunted by our past - individuals as well as countries and continents. Marx and Stalin continue to haunt the GDR and Russia. Hitler's actions haunt people all around the world to this day. We are also haunted by pop culture. The Beatles music is everywhere and lives inside all of us. Images also haunt us, whether it's four men crossing a road on an album cover, or scenes of the Wall coming down in 1989 or photographs of the Holocaust survivors being liberated from the camps. The images have become part of our collective memory, even if we weren't there to witness it ourselves.

Which brings me to book cover choices. The Australian cover heads this post. I'm fascinated how and why different countries get very different covers. The Bloomsbury and Canadian versions remind me of the US cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I love the Portuguese version that clearly relates to the fateful crossing of Abbey Road. One, less sympatico Goodreads reviewer said, So, this is a novel about how some people need to be more careful crossing roads. This cover would be perfect for them!

Bloomsbury

Hamish Hamilton | Penguin Canada

Relógio D'Água Editores Portugal

It's not only Abbey Road that features in The Man Who Saw Everything. One of the characters loves the Beatles song Penny Lane. It was only towards the end of the book that I began to realise that some of the lyrics was interwoven into the story - the barber and the nurse spring to mind - a reread would be necessary to spot them all, I suspect.

In 2009, McCartney reflected:

"Penny Lane" was kind of nostalgic, but it was really [about] a place that John and I knew ... I'd get a bus to his house and I'd have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. It was a place that we both knew, and so we both knew the things that turned up in the story. (source)

If you're planning on reading this book soon, here are the lyrics to take with you:


Penny Lane | The Beatles | 1967

In Penny Lane there is a barber showing photographs
Of every head he's had the pleasure to have known
And all the people that come and go
Stop and say hello

On the corner is a banker with a motorcar
The little children laugh at him behind his back
And the banker never wears a mac
In the pouring rain, very strange

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes
A four of fish and finger pies
In summer, meanwhile back

Behind the shelter in the middle of a roundabout
The pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she's in a play
She is anyway

In Penny Lane the barber shaves another customer
We see the banker sitting waiting for a trim
And then the fireman rushes in
From the pouring rain, very strange

Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
I sit, and meanwhile back
Penny lane is in my ears and in my eyes
There beneath the blue suburban skies
Penny Lane

Epitaph Philosophy:

I'm always fascinated by the epitaphs chosen by authors to lead us into their stories. Given Levy's penchant for symbolism, I wanted to unpack what she might have been trying to tell us with the two epitaphs at the start of The Man Who Saw Everything.

• Karel Teige, The Shooting Gallery | 1946

Poetic thought, unlike rootless orchids, did not grow in a greenhouse and did not faint when confronted with today's traumas.

Teige was an avant-garde Czech 'agent provocateur and seismograph, at once provoking action and debate and yet simultaneously reacting with the utmost sensitivity to the shifting political spectrum of his time.' (Kenneth Frampton, Introduction, Karel Teige / 1900–1951: L'Enfant Terrible of the Czech Modernist Avant-Garde | 1999)

He was an editor, writer and artist during the 1920's and 30's. He was a Marxist, but not the card carrying kind. After the 1948 takeover by the Communists, he was not considered to be toeing the party line. Teige was denounced and forbidden to publish or speak out.

Sadly, it would seem, that Teige did in fact, succumb to the traumas of his time, as all reports claimed that he died a 'broken man' in 1951.

It looks like poetic thought can be a as fragile as an orchid. Though, here we are, over fifty years later, still able to read his words, despite the secret police claiming to have destroyed all his papers.

• Susan Sontag, In Plato's Cave | On Photography | 1977

To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.

Sontag also claimed that the proliferation of photographic images had developed a 'chronic voyeuristic relation' within people. I wonder what she would think of the selfie?
She also believed 'that the individual who seeks to record cannot intervene, and that the person who intervenes cannot then faithfully record, for the two aims contradict each other'. Was Jennifer merely having a conversation about the nature of beauty as she claimed, or was she trying to capture the real Saul? Perhaps she wanted to show Saul how others saw him or maybe she was objectifying him?

In 2003, Sontag published Regarding the Pain of Others, where she revised some of the opinions she had expressed earlier. She was now concerned that 'people remember through photographs but that they remember only the photographs ... that the photographic image eclipses other forms of understanding—and remembering. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture'.

Saul definitely had trouble remembering what was real, what was imagined or what he wanted to be true.

Favourite Quote:

I have sex all the time but I don't know if it's the sex I had thirty years ago or three months ago. I think I have extended my sexual history across all time zones, but I did have a lot of sex before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. After that it's a blur but I think I had less sex in social democracies than I did in authoritarian regimes.

Facts:

• Shortlisted 2019 Goldsmith Prize
• Longlisted 2019 Booker Prize
• My 2016 Hot Milk post.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

My work has been a bit crazy this year. And during August and September it was hectic and full of changes. So a lot of the hype surrounding the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale passed me by. I saw some excited chattering on blogs, twitter and goodreads. I heard some of the discussion around it's long-listing for the Booker Prize before publication date. And I caught a fleeting glimpse of the embargo breach by Amazon.

But until the day before the Booker announcement, I hadn't really given The Testaments much thought. Obviously I wanted to read it. I usually love Atwood's stuff and I LOVED The Handmaid's Tale. But it would have to be twenty years since I last read it.

When I first read it in my twenties it made me furious (in that good bookish way when a book excites your passions). A reread, a few years later in my early thirties, confirmed that it could still enrage me (in that good bookish way when a book can get under your skin).

Sadly, I missed the recent Elizabeth Moss tv adaptation of the book.

My plan had been to reread The Handmaid's Tale prior to starting The Testaments. I was in no hurry; knew I would get around to it one of these days, so I just let it sit in the back of my mind for later on.

Until Monday afternoon last week, when my new boss asked me who I thought would win the Booker. I had been so busy, I hadn't even clocked that it was that time of year again. Not having read any of the shortlist, all I could go on was my gut feel that Atwood would win. Her book had the hype, her writing was guaranteed to be good and it seemed like the safe option.

Tuesday morning.

I was up early, getting ready for work, thinking a million other thoughts about all the things I needed to prioritise at work that day. As I sat down to eat breakfast, I glanced at twitter and suddenly realised that the Booker Prize was about to be announced. I quickly found the facebook feed so that little old me, all the way across the other side of the world on a completely different day, could watch the Monday night announcement in London, live! Don't you just love technology.

And joint winners!

Didn't see that coming at all.

Without even thinking about it, I raced up to my bedroom, grab The Testaments from beside my bed and read the first chapter before work.

Any thought of rereading The Handmaid's Tale first went straight out the window - my justification being to see if one could read The Testaments without having any, or much knowledge of the first. I was going to offer myself up as a reading guinea pig!

So what did I remember about The Handmaid's Tale after all this time?

None of the names for starters, except that the Handmaids were named after the man - 'Offred' 'Ofthomas' etc. The handmaids were basically baby making machines. For some reason the wives were not able to produce healthy babies of their own. Religious ritual was evolved to make the baby making thing palatable. I remember that, in the end she (the main character, the titular Handmaid) must have escaped, or at least her story had got out, as she was being studied in a future history class or symposium. I remember that it was religious fanaticism that created Gilead, that this regime was still fairly new as people could remember a time before. I remember thinking that the parallels with our times were frighteningly familiar - which is the trademark of all truly good sci-fiction writing - to make it just enough like our world to make it seem possible. I recall that our Handmaid, either rediscovered her old boyfriend or established a new connection with a driver or guard or someone who helped her plan her escape. I believe the ending was deliberately unclear about the success of this mission. I loved it. It was feminist and very critical of the role religion plays in keeping women in their place.

What were my initial reactions as I started The Testaments?

Firstly I was confused by the names. I couldn't remember if any of these people had been in the first book. Aunt Lydia? Commander Kyle? Not sure.

But I was soon delighted to discover that this didn't matter very much, as what I was getting here was the back story that filled in all the gaps. Via various narrators we saw how Gilead was created, how the rest of the world responded to this change as well as various hints and rumours about the story surrounding our earlier Handmaid and what happened to her and her baby.

I've read that some people have been disappointed or underwhelmed by Atwood's latest offering, but I thoroughly enjoyed being back her capable hands.

It didn't move me as strongly as I recall being moved by The Handmaid's Tale. This book felt less political, less feminist, less concerned with religion, less personal and dare I say, less urgent. Perhaps the chorus of voices diluted the power that I experienced with the first Handmaid's story. Maybe I've mellowed with age. Perhaps Atwood has. Or it could be a simple as the purpose of the story. The Handmaid's Tale asked questions and left lots unanswered. The gaps allowed for supposition, insecurity, fear and doubt. The Testaments tidied all of that up. And without giving away the ending, the homage to the first book at the end of the second, was satisfying and offered a number of pleasing resolutions.

Naomi @Consumed by Ink and Marcie @Buried in Print are hosting Margaret Atwood Reading Month in November that will include a readalong of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments. I'm the rebel who will be reading the books in reverse order as I'm hoping to squeeze in a reread of The Handmaid's Tale along with ALL the other blogging commitments I have on my plate for November!

To finish up, I want to bring to light a little known Aussie connection to Atwood. Well, I didn't know this - perhaps you did?

In the Sydney Morning Herald on the 16th Feb 2019, Nick Bryant wrote,

Her connection with the Sunshine State comes from her second husband, the novelist Graeme Gibson, whose father emigrated there from Canada in search of a friendlier climate and cleaner air. "Every time we got invited to Australia we would go up to Brisbane to visit the rellies," she says, laughing. "His mother and his grandmother were from there." 

Longlisted for The Giller Prize 2019

FranKissStein by Jeanette Winterson

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time wondering how best to write the title of this book - FRAN KISS STEIN like the cover, FRANKISSSTEIN like the title page of the book or Frankissstein like Goodreads.
FranKissStein appealed to me, but it's not a version I've spotted anywhere else.
Whatever you call it, though, Frankissstein: A Love Story was fascinating stuff.

• I was never bored except in the company of others.

After reading McEwan's Machines Like Us earlier in the year, I was in the mindset to be thinking about AI, robots and what our future world might look like as technology takes hold or even takes over. It was very interesting to be able to compare and contrast two such prominent authors and their approaches to the topic and their different ways of weaving a story around it.

• The timeless serenity of the past that we British do so well is an implanted memory - you could call it a fake memory...where the turbulence of the past is recast as landmark, as tradition, as what we defend, what we uphold....History is what you make it.

Last year I also read Shelley's Frankenstein and a bio about her and her mother (Romantic Outlaws). All of this gave my reading of Frankissstein a much richer experience as my knowledge of the original story and details about Shelley, and her mother's life, were still fresh in my mind.

Winterson weaves together several strands of story. We start with a reimagining of Shelley's time in Italy with her husband, Percy, her sister, Claire, Lord Byron and Dr Polidori where she first develops the idea for her story Frankenstein.

• Percy - the mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.

We then jump to now, or perhaps a now just minutes away, where sex bots, AI, cryopreservation and cephalic isolation are becoming the norm. Our modern characters are called Dr Ry Shelley (a transgender doctor/journalist), Ron Lord (the sexbot king), Claire (the admin assistant who keeps popping up everywhere in different roles), Poly D (the Vanity Fair reporter) and Prof. Victor Stein (a TED talking scientist).

• Victor - I want to live long enough to reach the future.

Later on, Winterson also brings in an alternate ending for the original story, with some time in the lunatic asylum, Bedlam. Frankenstein has been admitted by Captain Walton, after he found him floating by his ship on an ice floe. To make it even more interesting, the director of Bedlam, Mr Wakefield, then invites Mary Shelley to his facility to talk with the patient who claims he should have 'perished on the ice'. Love it!

• Ry - I am what I am, but what I am is not one thing, not one gender. I live with doubleness....I am in the body that I prefer. But the past, my past, isn't subject to surgery. I didn't do it to distance myself from myself. I did it to get nearer to myself.

To round out the tale, we finish with a glimpse into the life of Ada Lovelace, Byron's mathematician daughter.

• Ada - It was hoped that numbers would tame the Byronic blood in my veins....My life in numbers has been as wild as any life lived among words.

There are so many ideas to explore within these pages - gender, duality, consciousness, religion, soul, history, change and knowledge - just to name a few. What's real and what's false? Does history repeat itself? What's the difference between privacy and secrecy? Is history memory or fact? Are inventions dreams or machines? What does it mean to be alive? Can technology be bad or good, or is just the use it gets put to?

• Byron - we are haunted by ourselves, he says, and that is enough for any man....The human race seeks its own death. We hasten towards what we fear most.

We also have books in books, with references to Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood and Ovid.

Winterson's delicious imagery emerges from page one and draws you into the various strands of story, with a poetic, Romantic writing style for the 19th century sections morphing into a more jarring, rapid speak for the now.

• every solid thing had dissolved into its watery equivalent.
• We were all around the fire that night, the room more shadows than light, for we had few candles.
• We update ourselves individually and generationally. We can adapt within a generation to a changing world.

Ultimately, I found Frankissstein to be the more satisfying, complex read. Machines Like Us failed to excite me or fully engage me in the discussion that McEwan was aiming to stimulate. Whereas Winterson stimulated me from start to finish. But, I've just realised, none of that really tells you why I enjoyed this story so.

The technical stuff obviously played its role, but the stuff I'm still thinking about two weeks later is all the discussion around gender, personality and who we really are.

What is it that really makes us human? From the stories well tell about ourselves to the way we chose to present ourselves to the world. It's an age-old process that flows over into the kind of future we end up creating for ourselves. We merge fact and fiction, dreams, beliefs and misconceptions, until we have something that makes us unique. Or does it?

Favourite Quote: Humans: so many good ideas. So many failed ideals.

Favourite Character: Ry Shelley, who seemed to inhabit quite a bit of Winterson's own persona, and certainly captured my own doubts and questioning way of viewing pretty much everything.

Favourite or Forget? Loved it. It would make for a great book group discussion.

Facts:

• Longlisted for 2019 Man Booker Prize

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

What a hoot!

I wasn't expecting a neo-noir comedy from such a grim title, but I had some genuine laugh out loud moments throughout My Sister, the Serial Killer. Oyinkan Braithwaite has written a punchy, sharp, witty story that blew in like a breath of fresh air in this year's Women's Prize shortlist.

One of the reasons why I love to read the various shortlists and longlists is for the surprises they throw up - for the books I would probably never read otherwise. Not because I have anything in particular against said books, but simply because there are so many books out there and I can only read so many. We all make decisions about what books we usually choose to read. We have preferred genres, topics, writing styles, We have pet interests and passions that guide our choices. We're influenced by book clubs, pretty covers, word of mouth, bookseller recommendations and publicity blurbs. Our mood, phase of life and even the weather all impact on our reading habits. Every good book that crosses our path, feels like a little miracle of good luck and serendipity.

So many good books (or otherwise) slip under our radars. But getting a major book award nomination suddenly elevates a book into the wider public gaze. Bloggers blog about them, papers publish interviews and reviews and the authors suddenly appear on podcasts, morning TV programs and get invited to writer's festivals.

The cover and title of My Sister, the Serial Killer caught my eye when it first appeared on our shelves at work. It sounded intriguing, but contemporary noir thrillers are not my usually high on my reading agenda. It took being shortlisted for it to actually make it's way onto my TBR pile. And it took just finishing a rather intense, lengthy book and feeling in the need for a shorter, lighter, palate cleansing read for me to pick it up this week.

It was an utter delight from start to finish.

I loved the rhythmic, snappy language. I loved both sisters, despite their obvious flaws (they reminded me of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood with one being the reserved, careful, responsible sister and the other being carefree, careless and impulsive). I loved the humour that hid much darker secrets and disturbing childhoods. I also really enjoyed the glimpses into daily life in Lagos and the customs and traditions of modern life in Nigeria.

What appeared to be a light, easy read actually concealed much tougher issues behind it's shiny exterior. The effects of domestic childhood abuse on subsequent generations and the serious psychological pain it leaves were addressed subtly as too were the specific issues that women face in Nigeria (including child brides).

Favourite Quote:

I know better than to take life directions from someone without a moral compass.

Favourite Character: The eldest sister, Korede. I love her assessment of the situation. She describes, her younger, killer sister, Ayoola as being "completely oblivious to all but her own needs" and "she is incapable of practical underwear". Her obsessive cleaning habit and precise organisational skills tell their own story,

The things that will go into my handbag are laid out on my dressing table.

Two packets of pocket tissues, on 30-centiliter bottle of water, one first aid kit, one packet of wipes, one wallet, one tube of hand cream, one lip balm, one phone, one tampon, one rape whistle.

Basically the essentials for every woman. 

Favourite or Forget: No need to reread this one, but thoroughly enjoyed it and will look out for whatever Braithwaite does next.

Fascinating Facts:  I first came across the tradition of ten year anniversaries to commemorate the passing of loved ones in Amor Towles' A Gentleman of Moscow. I was surprised/curious to see that it was also a part of Nigerian life. I hadn't heard about this custom before but it sounds like such a healthy thing to do.

It has been ten years now (since our father died) and we are expected to celebrate him, to throw an anniversary party in honour of his life.

Even if your relationship with the dead person in question was problematic!

Facts:

• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
• Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
• Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2019

Book 2/20 Books of Summer (winter)
I finished this book on Tuesday when it only reached 14℃ in Sydney. We had wind coming off snow in the mountains and rainy, grey skies. It was a miserable day perfect for curling up with a good book. On Tuesday Dublin reached a balmy, summery 12℃!

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I do love to theme my holiday reads where possible. A recent week long Far North Queensland break in beautiful, sunny Port Douglas on the edge of the Daintree Rainforest, gave me a chance to finally read this year's Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Power's The Overstory. (I also packed a book of essays called City of Trees by Sophie Cunningham as a companion read - to be reviewed soon).

The Australian cover of The Overstory has been one of my favourite designs throughout 2018 and it is now one of my favourite reads of 2019. In trying to work though my feelings about this book though, it's hard to go past Benjamin Markovits' Guardian review of The Overstory, where he said,

It’s an extraordinary novel, which doesn’t mean that I always liked it. Martin Amis’s brilliant description of what it’s like to admire a book – the stages you go through, from resistance to reluctance, until you finally reach acceptance in the end – is probably more linear than what usually happens. Because reluctance and acceptance can go hand in hand...

It’s an astonishing performance. Without the steadily cumulative effect of a linear story, Powers has to conjure narrative momentum out of thin air, again and again. And mostly he succeeds. Partly because he’s incredibly good at describing trees, at turning the science into poetry...

There is something exhilarating, too, in reading a novel whose context is wider than human life. Like Moby-Dick, The Overstory leaves you with a slightly adjusted frame of reference. Time matters differently; you look at the trees outside your window more curiously. Suspiciously, even.

Yes, yes, yes! It really is extraordinary and astonishing and exhilarating, with some qualifications.

Initially I thought that following the narratives of nine individuals would be hard to track and I made a few character notes on each one, during their origin chapters, but I didn't really need to in the end. Most of the characters was so fully realised which such rich backstories, that they were all clearly delineated in my mind.

I found the story mesmerising and haunting. Trees crept into my dreams and I found myself touching trees and smelling them on my morning walks, more so than usual. Our day trip into the Daintree even gave me a chance to hug an old, old tree with gratitude.

I also learnt so much. About the catastrophic chestnut blight and the so-called nature strips left by the logging companies on the side of the road, so that from the car you cannot see that entire mountainsides of forest have been logged behind them. About how trees migrate and communicate with each other. How they protect themselves and those around them from infestations. How intricate a forest system really is. And about how quickly we're losing the old forests of the world.

My qualifications?

At times I was concerned the story might tip over into earnestness or become too worthy for it's own good, but Powers reined it in each time.

I experienced resistance a few times - especially during the activism phase of the novel. Adam, the reluctant activist character was the one who helped me through.

At times it felt a bit too easy or convenient to create a divide between those who wanted to save the old growth forests and those nasty, greedy capitalists, who didn't. We all know it's not as black and white as that and that there's a lot of nuance and complexity in between.

The really hard part, though, is coming away from this story, wanting to help, wanting to make a difference, wanting for everyone to see how important it is for all of us to maintain diversity of species, but coming up with no real solution. The activism section of the book showed how futile it is in the face of rampant materialism and capitalism. Those advocating jobs and usefulness (in the name of making more money for themselves) will never see the point of long-haired layabouts, sponging off government handouts. And any scientific study is dismissed, ridiculed or declared 'unclear' - needing more time and more study before any action can possibly be considered - as another forest is cleared.

The only option Power leaves us with, in the end, is,

The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.

The Overstory is a good story. It's poetic, urgent, timely, rich in detail, epic in nature and wears it's heart on it's sleeve. It is meaningful and satisfying.

I'm not sure we can say that this leaves us with a particularly optimist view of the human race, although, we can feel pretty sure that the trees will survive, somehow, somewhere, no matter what.

My copy of The Overstory in the Daintree Rainforest

Favourite Quote:

My simple rule of thumb, then, is this: when you cut down a tree, what you make from it should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down.

Favourite Character: The entire Hoel family who start this novel off with such a powerful generational story.

Favourite of Forget: Unforgettable

Facts:

• Shortlisted 2018 Man Booker Prize
• Winner 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
• Winner 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award

1/20 Books of Winter
The Overstory was read during my week in Far North Queensland - where the average daytime temperature was a glorious 27℃. The same week in Dublin had a chillier average of 17℃.
#justsaying

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

The hardest part about writing a review more than a week after finishing the book is trying to make sense of my notes and markings and trying not to get my current reads mixed up with the old book. So to help me get everything straight in my head, I'll start with the housekeeping.

The Sea, The Sea was my fifth book in Liz @Adventures in Reading great Iris Murdoch Readalong, where she is reading (or more accurately rereading) ALL 26 of Murdoch's books in chronological order over a 2 year period. There are now only seven more books to go - of which I have only one on my TBR pile - The Book and the Brotherhood. Although I'm tempted to source Jackson's Dilemma before December so that I can be in at the end.

My edition of The Sea, The Sea was the 1999 Vintage one with an Introduction by John Burnside. He focused on the seventies provenance of this book and the 'spiritual awakening' happening at that time in the Western world - the interest in Eastern philosophies and ideas about 'mercy, compassion and right action'. He also alerted me to the fact that Charles Arrowby, our flawed protagonist, had bought into the whole 'Romantic, theatrical myths' idea of retreating, hermit-like to the coast to ponder his life, to get back to nature and surrender his 'worldly powers'.

Burnside warned me about the negative view of marriage that permeated the entire book before going off on an excursion into Milarepa country at the end. Who, I hear you ask?

Milarepa was a Tibetan poet mystic who managed to achievement Enlightenment in one lifetime. The two things I took out of Burnside's discussion of Milarepa - to be kept in mind as I read - was that the spiritual life led 'not to transcendence, but to a fuller expression of one's true nature' and 'we cannot change ourselves utterly; we can only change how we are in the world: how we see, how we act, how we tell our stories.'

I give you all this research because I have discovered over this past year that Murdoch's books not only improve when read in company, but furthermore they improve with knowledge. Murdoch wrote intelligently, coolly passionate and intense, with literary and philosophical references throughout her work. Watching her subtle clever ways at work as you read, is one of the pleasures of her work. There are times when she falls short, comes up clunky or heavy-handed, but then there are times when she soars. Despite liking very few of her characters (and actively disliking an even larger number) her books have insinuated themselves into my psyche, I suspect forever.

Murdoch gets inside the heads and hearts of her main characters. Since I tend to read for character development more so than an action-packed plot, it's understandable why she affects me so deeply. Whether you like them or not, Murdoch's characters go on a journey, both internal and external. I'm still not sure Charles Arrowby's journey resulted in him learning anything or changing anything though. I suspect he will always be a pompous, self-righteous, arrogant, control freak. Which is why the end annoyed me.

Liz loved the ending, claiming it was one of the best Murdoch endings ever. But it left me scratching my head as it seemed to take off in a new direction entirely. Any future drama that Arrowby inflicted on himself and others could now be blamed on the demons set loose - just another cop out for a man unable to face his own demons and accept responsibility for his own actions!

Arrowby is the classic Peter Pan figure - a man who never grew up, constantly searching for an all-forgiving, unconditional loving mother and stunted by a failed teen romance. He idealised women, pursued them relentlessly, before withdrawing his love and affection when he discovered they were not perfect. He lived his life in a heightened state of absurd melodrama and self-made confusion. As the narrator of his story, he is highly unreliable. The reader doubts his motivations, questions his hold on reality and suspects his memories have been twisted to fit his preferred version of events.

I couldn't understand why this master manipulator had so many friends who wanted to stay in touch with him, even when he moved off to the ends of the world, and why on earth all those ridiculous women kept coming back for more. There must have been an hypnotic charm to his personality that he was unable to reveal in his writing.

As with most of Murdoch's books, inanimate objects become personalities in their own right. In this case, the sea and the house, Scruff End, that Arrowby moved into take on a life of their own, full of unknown, possibly monstrous or magical beings. There was a constant threat implied - mother nature was not to be the solace or calm retreat that Arrowby was seeking.

I had also been reading the book for a few days before I noticed the discreet green detail in the wave design on the cover of the book, that was not a wave. Jo Walker had carefully, gracefully inserted a tendril - Arrowby's unknown, dream-like sea creature's tentacle - lurking amongst the waves. Nice!

Other Murdoch tropes popped up including caves, caverns, towers, magnifying glass, pools, bogs, moss, fog, windows, stones, rocks, pebbles, shells, vase, monsters, faces, letters, rope and field glasses, just to name a few.

Many of the themes were pure Murdoch too - goodness, obsession, limitations of the human soul, success, rational thought, truth and imperfection.

A number of quotes about marriage bear repeating for how disturbing they truly were. Is this Murdoch's view I wonder, or just Arrowby's?

Marriage is a sort of brainwashing which breaks the mind into the acceptance of so many horrors.

Every persisting marriage is based on fear.

People simply settle into positions of dominion and submission. Of course they sometimes "grow together" or "achieve a harmony", since you have to deal rationally with a source of terror in your life. I suspect there are awfully few happy marriages really, only people conceal their misery and their disappointment.

I had to struggle here with my own superstitious horror of the married state, that unimaginable condition of intimacy and mutual bondage.

I finished the book not only doubting Arrowby's chances of enlightenment but also his ability to self-reflect or change. He claimed that the least he could do was, 'live quietly and try to do my tiny good things and harm no one.' I seriously doubted his ability to harm no one and any good he attempted was designed to help himself first and foremost. As for living quietly, the entire story is about Arrowby's complete inability to live a calm, quiet life.

Photo by Sketch the Sun on Unsplash

Favourite Character: The sea, the sea! So many glorious Murdochian descriptions of the sea during all weathers, seasons and times of the day.

Favourite Quote: I had three.

• one of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats
• if there is art enough a lie can enlighten us as well as the truth
• they yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving

Facts:

• Winner of the 1978 Man Booker Prize.
• The title could be a reference to Xenophon's Anabasis - where 10 000 Greeks, after marching and fighting in a foreign skirmish, called "thalatta, thallata" (the sea, the sea) when they realise they'd been saved from certain death and had made it home to safety (this phrase was also referenced by Jules Verne in Journey to the Centre of the Earth and James Joyce in Ulysses).
• or more likely it was a nod to Paul Valery's poem, La Cimetiere Marin and the lines "la mer, la mer, toujour recommence" (the sea, the sea, forever restarting) which Murdoch also referenced in The Unicorn chapter 4.
• The Sea, The Sea was a modern homage to Shakespeare's The Tempest (theatrical illusions, magic, betrayal, revenge, family, morally ambiguous, power, obedience, monstrosity, cruelty).

Books in Books:

• Odyssey
• Lord Jim
• Wings of the Dove
• Hamlet

Previous IM Posts:

• Under the Net
• Flight From the Enchanter
• The Unicorn
• The Nice and the Good

#IMreadalong

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

Reading Washington Black by Esi Edugyan was like eating a big bag of sweets. Some were good, some not so good. And after gorging myself on the first half, I found the second half a bit too much take.

The first half of Washington Black was unputdownable. I loved the engaging voice of the child narrator. His early life on the plantation was brutal yet fascinating. Edugyan included some strong, descriptive passages in these early chapters and I found the secondary characters just as intriguing.

Washington's fear and mistrust of everyone was more than understandable, but the constant tension built up by this fear with every change or arrival of a new character eventually lost it's impact by overuse. The tension was continually being built up but never quite realised....although perhaps, this is what it's like to live in a state of slavery in Washington's world.

For me the tale started to lose it's way when Wash and Titch took off to the Arctic in search of Titch's father. It reminded me of what happened when I read Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things where 'something went a little off kilter'. I began to doubt my narrator, I became sceptical and even a little cynical. I became aware of the writer and felt manipulated at times. I was being asked to go on a journey that had lost its believability and maybe even lost its way.

Billed as a coming of age story or a life after slavery story, neither felt predominant to me. With such a strong start on the plantation, I expected to be taken on the struggle as Wash's came to terms with his newfound freedom. But I never got a strong sense of what life was really like for a freed slave in western 'civilisation' - the injustice, unfairness, the everyday prejudices, burdens and guilt. The existential angst wasn't fully realised.

And Wash's personal growth felt too much too soon - it was too big a jump from uneducated child slave to scientific, emotionally intelligent young man. The soaring heights of the first half floundered and crash landed.

Titch's emotional arc didn't make sense to me either. He had me right up to the point of  his disbelief/fear/hope/joy at being reunited with his father after thinking that he was dead. I was incredibly moved by this exchange. Titch obviously had his own struggle with personal freedom, yet his sudden disappearance was the first moment when I felt caught in the author's web.

There were a few tiny touches of surrealism or mysticism which were left unexplained and unresolved. They added a fable-like element to the story, and maybe that's were the problem lies. In the end I wasn't sure if this was an allegory or an historical fiction, adventure story. I felt like I was getting mixed messages by the end.

I will certainly read more books by Edugyan - when her writing soared, it dazzled and some of her minor characters were so well-drawn and vivid, that I was disappointed when the story moved on without them. Potential and possibility abounds.

Giller Prize winner
Man Booker shortlist
Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

I'm heart broken.

And I may just have read my most favourite and best book for 2018.

Sally Rooney has written a gut-wrenching, painfully poignant love story about two young damaged souls that will stay with me for a very long time. In Normal People she has captured perfectly all the angst, insecurity and missteps that dog any young relationship. Especially when the two young people involved are still trying to work out their own issues leftover from their childhood.

Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it.

Rooney explores the misconceptions around 'normal' and the anxieties we inflict on ourselves in our attempts to belong, to not stand out from the crowd or to be different. On the outside both Connell and Marianne look like they have 'normal' enough family lives. But Connell is being raised by a young single mum and doesn't know who his father is (his mum has said she he has happy to discuss it with him, but he doesn't want to know).

Marianne is also being raised by a single mum (and an older brother), but her father died a number of years ago. Her family is wealthy and except for a dad, seems to have it all. Connell's mum cleans house for Marianne's family. They avoid each other at school, but strike up intense conversations in Marianne's kitchen, as Connell waits for his mum to finish.

Connell is one of the popular, sporty kids at school, who hides just how clever he is to fit in. Marianne doesn't bother hiding how smart she is and doesn't try to fit in. She actively goes about being different, disdainful and fiercely independent.

Normally, I wouldn't be drawn to a tortured romance between two YA's. I had more than enough of that in my own YA years! But this is not your normal YA love story. Rooney gets deep into the heart of this relationship. She teases out each painful nuance and she takes you on this emotional journey that feels very real and very authentic.

We soon learn that Marianne's dad was a violent, unpleasant man. Her mother and brother have dealt with their pain around this by identifying with the perpetrator. They now give back a weird, messed up mix of psychological and physical abuse to Marianne, the only one who has rebelled against this way of living a life.

And as time goes by, we realise just how insecure and anxious Connell really is once he leaves his home base to go to uni. Spending his childhood trying so hard not to stand out, now means that he doesn't know how to stand on his own two feet in the bigger world.

This is a torturous journey, a train-wreck at times, but I couldn't put it down. I cared for both of them, even as I wanted to shake them into perfect understanding. All those things unsaid, assumed and misspoken that so often plague young love (and many older loves that I know) are explored in agonising detail. My heart is broken, but there is hope.

Normal People deserves the buzz it's getting. We all need to be reminded, at times, how important it is to tell those we love how we really feel.

• Longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker
• Shortlisted for the 2018 Costa Book Award
• Longlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.

The Nice and the Good by Iris Murdoch

For the very first time, I've actually read my latest #IMreadalong book during the month selected by Liz @Adventures in Reading. The September read was The Nice and the Good first published in 1968 (a very good year, I might add) which makes it 50 years old.

It was an odd mix of murder mystery, rom-com and rural farce not unlike The Diary of a Provincial Lady of Cold Comfort Farm (both stories that left me cold and unmoved, wondering what all the fuss was about). If not for this readalong with Liz, I suspect I might feel the same way about Murdoch's books. 

Murdoch's books are about intelligence, philosophy and the craft of writing, they are not about heart and soul. The only way I can get through them is to embrace the cognitive element and research the sh*t out of them (to paraphrase Matt Damon in The Martian).

The extra research that I'm doing for these books has made me delve deeper into IM's themes, interests and intentions. I've explored some of her philosophical ideas, translated her many uses of Latin, French and German phrases and googled the various art works, authors and poets that she has mentioned in her books. These are things that I enjoy doing, as long as I don't have to do it for every single book that I read!

The Nice and the Good led me straight into the arms of the elegiac poet, Sextus Propertius (circa 50 BC - 15 BC). One of our main characters, Willy is writing a book about Propertius. I now know enough about IM to realise that this is significant. Just reading some of the quotes most famously attributed to Propertius, quickly showed that many of her plot points and character arcs could be linked to these. (The link attached to his name above, takes you to a translated reproduction of his Love Elegies where he waxes lyrical about his love for Cynthia.)

• Let's give the historians something to write about.

• Love is fostered by confidence and constancy; he who is able to give much is able also to love much.

• Let each man have the wit to go his own way.

• To each man at his birth nature has given some fault.

• If you see anything, always deny that you've seen; or if perchance something pains you, deny that you're hurt.

• Anyone who is an enemy of mine, let him love women, but let he who is my friend rejoice in men.

• Afflicted by love's madness all are blind.

• Let each man pass his days in that endeavour wherein his gift is greatest.

• Never change when love has found its home.

• Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent.

• Love can be put off, never abandoned

• At last, an injury suffered brings you back to my bed, expelling you from the doors of another.

• Tell me who is able to keep his bed chaste, or which goddess is able to live with one god alone?

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Propertius And Cynthia At Tivoli by Auguste Jean-Baptiste Vinchon

Murdoch believed that humans are by nature deeply narcissistic but that genuine love - love of beauty or love of genuine good in another can change this. The Nice and the Good is all about the tension between this kind of genuine love and self-love. Murdoch uses red herrings, secrets, the supernatural and various other complications to drive the tension. Everyone seems to be hiding something in this book.

The Nice and the Good is also, quite obviously, about being nice and/or good. Or not. I could probably write a whole post just on that idea alone, but will leave that for others in the #IMreadalong to cover this off (hopefully).

Naturally the sea features significantly, not only in the lives of our characters, but also as a symbolic element for Murdoch to play with. My research for this particular book revealed a whole lot of stuff about katabasis - a descent or journey of some kind into the underworld, downhill, sinking, retreat, down south or to the coast and it's opposite idea anabasis - usually a trip from the coast to the interior. Obviously the cave scene was a katabasis device that led to a transformation for Pierre and Ducane. The ripple effects of this descent also changed the lives of everyone else involved.

Murdoch described her books as being either opened or closed. Open stories were driven by character and closed books were driven by plot. The Nice and the Good is obviously an open book, with it's large cast of characters.

One of our main guys, Richard had a thing for a piece of art called Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time also called An Allegory of Venus and Cupid and A Triumph of Venus by Agnolo di Cosimo (1503 - 1572), also known as Bronzino. It was painted in the Mannerist style with the classic figura serpentinata feature highlighting movement, tension and proportion.

Murdoch describes the painting via Paula with,

The figures at the top of the picture are Time and Truth, who are drawing back a blue veil to reveal the ecstatic kiss which Cupid is giving to his Mother. The wailing figure behind Cupid is Jealousy. Beyond the plump faced girl with the scaly tail represents Deceit. Paula noticed for the first time the strangeness of the girl's hands, and then saw that they were reversed, the right hand on the left arm, the left hand on the right arm. Truth stares, Time moves. But the butterfly kissing goes on, the lips just brushing, the long shining bodies juxtaposed with almost awkward tenderness, not quite embracing. How like Richard it all is, she thought, so intellectual, so sensual.

Many phrases associated with this work of art, also reflect the themes of the story - Ambivalence, elusive, lust, fraud, envy, unchaste love, transience of physical pleasure, crowded, beasts, madness, erotic, 'looking good' rather than 'being good'. And a discussion about the artist, sounds very much like Murdoch herself,

Is it liking or loathing? He lacks human warmth, you could say. He doesn't feel for his sitters as Rembrandt felt for his. He is intellectually removed. He scorns or inwardly mocks just as much as he preens and flatters. 

The Independent 2012, Great Works: An Allegory with Venus and Cupid, By Bronzino by Michael Glover

Murdoch is a particular type of English writer. Intellectual, distant, cool. The lack of warmth in her writing and the confusing messages about love and goodness are making me doubt whether I care to know any more about the philosophical musings of Simone Weil, Plato or Murdoch.

I underlined a lot of sections, but on rereading them, found that most of them were significant within the story and revealed much about IM, but very few of them felt significant to me.

I did like, towards the end,

Perhaps there were spirits, perhaps there were evil spirits, but they were little things. The great evil, the dreadful evil, that which made war and slavery and all man's inhumanity to man lay in the cool self-justifying ruthless selfishness of quite ordinary people.

And,

The past is gone, it doesn't exist any more. However, things that do exist are responsibilities occasioned by the past and also our thoughts about it, which we may not find it very easy to control. 

Without the extra research I think I would find these books rather dull and uninspiring. It's the layers that make them interesting in an intellectual way, but it's very hard to feel any emotions or care very much about any of her characters.

I appreciate Murdoch's books but I don't love them.

P.S. The foot on the left hand side of Bronzino's painting is the one famously used by the Monty Python crew.
P.P.S. The painting is hanging in the New York headquarters of the horologists in David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks.

The Nice and the Good was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize.
#CClist2

The Green Road by Anne Enright

I finally got around to reading The Green Road thanks to Cathy's #ReadIreland Month. It has been sitting on my TBR pile since 2016.

Over my years of blogging, I've come to realise that writing a rave review about a book I really enjoyed, if not loved and adored, is actually harder to do, than writing about those books that are fine reads but didn't quite reach the heights of ecstasy or move me into speechlessness.

The Green Road was such a wonderful, engaging, poignant read after a bout of books that were fine stories mostly which had failed to move me or delight me. I wonder if it was a coincidence that this bout of books were all written by men? By the end of the Winton, I felt an overwhelming sense of desperation to read a book written by a woman. Either way, I'm left feeling rather bemused about how to write an adequate response that does this glorious book justice.

The story of the Madigan family is a slight story in someway. There is no major crisis or earth shattering family secret. The Madigan's are just a regular family with the usual (in Irish terms) problems, misconceptions and issues.

We start with a series of stories seen from the perspective of each of the four children, Constance, Dan, Emmet and Hanna. We see the fall out of Dan choosing to leave home (for the priesthood, which causes his mother to take to her bed for a week!) via the baby sister's eyes. Ten years later we see him again in New York - a failed priest still coming to terms with his sexuality. The other brother makes his way to Africa as a UNICEF field worker whilst the eldest daughter has stayed in Ireland, married well, had a clutch of children and is battling with her weight. We cycle back to see Hanna, now all grown up, not quite making it as an actor, with a baby of her own and an alcohol problem.

Each of these chapters could almost be a story in their own right. Enright has the ability to weave a sense of place into each chapter so thoroughly, that shifting onto the next one is a little jarring at the start. Ardeevin, County Clare is vividly drawn, as too is AIDS ravaged New York and the hardships of Segou, Mali. Each sibling has attempted to find their own place in the world, their own sense of purpose, all the while their mother's voice and their childhood angst rings in their ears.

Their tale is the usual family tale of coming to terms with the image of your mother as you experienced her as a child, against the mother you wished she had been with the woman she really is. Rosaleen is annoying, at times manipulative and perhaps not quite grown up and at peace with her childhood. In other words, she's a regular woman trying to deal (or not) with her own issues as she brings up a family.

Enright writes with compassion, humour and insight. Like real life, nothing is wrapped up in a tidy bow, for the simple reason that the story goes on. One way or another, we always go on.

The second half of the book centres around Christmas 2005, when all the siblings come home together for the first time in a very long time. The catalyst? Their mother has just declared she is ready to sell the family home. And the Green Road of the title? It's a local road that leads through the fields of County Clare to the beach,

Fanore, Burren, County Clare

This road turned into the green road that went across the Burren, high above the beach at Fanore, and this was the most beautiful road in the world, bar none, her granny said -famed in song and story - the rocks gathering briefly into walls before lapsing back into field, the little stony pastures whose flowers were sweet and rare.

The Green Road was shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the Costa Book Award.
Enright won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award for 2016.

#ReadIreland18

#Begorrathon18

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

Patrick DeWitt is a Canadian author who now lives in Oregon, USA. The Sisters Brothers won the 75th Canadian Governor General's Literary Awards and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2012 Walter Scott Prize.

The Man Booker shortlist synopsis states that,

this dazzlingly original novel is a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. Oregon, 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. 

What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. 

Told in deWitt’s darkly comic and arresting style, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of western the Coen Brothers might write – stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel Ablutions, it is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work 

It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction and displays an exciting expansion of Dewitt’s range.

I confess this type of story is not my usual fare, but sometimes a book benefits from a little detective work before reading. 

I had tried to read UnderMajorDomo Minor a couple of years ago after Mr Books raved about how much he enjoyed it. But I couldn't get into it at all. When my bookclub assigned The Sisters Brothers as our February read, I knew I would have to work at finding a way in. I kept putting off reading it and when I bumped into a couple of bookclub members in a local cafe who were both struggling along at the halfway mark, I knew this book was going to become my very own personal challenge.

So, I fell back onto good old-fashioned research.

I discovered via Wikipedia that The Sisters Brothers was inspired by a Time–Life book on the California Gold Rush, which deWitt found at a garage sale.

My back cover quote from the Financial Times informed me that it was,

a witty noir Don Quixote...a blackly comic fable about emptiness, loneliness and the hollow lure of gold.

I have never read Don Quixote, so I read it's wikipedia summary and learnt that,

1. Don Quixote doesn't see the world for what it really is
2. it's a parody of the romantic/chivalry style that was popular at the time
3. it features quests, adventures and episodes
4. fantasy versus the real world
5. famous quote 'tilting at windmills'
6. spawned it's own adjective 'quixotic'
7. was an example of a picaresque novel

What on earth is a picaresque novel?

I'm glad you asked!

The Brittanica website says, 

The picaresque novel (Spanish: picaresca, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction that depicts the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by their wits in a corrupt society.

Image source

I now felt ready to begin my journey with Eli and Charlie Sisters.

Eli is our faithful but disaffected narrator. We quickly learn that he is kind-hearted, sensitive and not at all keen to continue life as a hit-man. He is burnt-out and reminded me somewhat of Jules in the movie Pulp Fiction who also wants to retire from his life of crime.

Eli's voice is rather dry and wry, deadpan yet melancholic. The fraternal relationship is the heart and soul of this wild west picaresque (yes! she used it in a sentence! new word bonus!) as the title suggests.

Charlie is a harder case to crack. He's the older brother who watches over (bosses around) his adoring younger brother. As their journey proceeds, Eli is forced to see Charlie more realistically and less idealistically even as Charlie undergoes his own life-altering event.

Their bizarre adventures, weird coincidences and chance meetings move us from Oregon to California via saloons, shoot-outs and drunken binges. A crying horseman, a cursed hut and a one-eyed horse cross our paths. A couple of unexpected intermissions are thrown in as well.

DeWitt was asked about these during an interview with Mumsnet,

I tend to work from a place of instinct rather than intellect. I like mysteries, in the work of others and in my own work as well. It's common for me to write sections that don't serve a specific purpose but feel necessary to me, and the intermission sections are good examples of this. I can't say that they propel a narrative or 'do'anything, but I find them crucial in fleshing out the landscape, illustrating its strangeness and "dangerousness".

The Western style that dominates the first two-thirds, suddenly changes to a sci-fi thriller when the brothers finally meet up with their latest target - a mad scientist type who has created a crazy toxic potion that finds gold.

A Telegraph review at the time described the book as Laurel & Hardy meets Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with a Little House on the Prairie ending. It's all of that and more.

I found myself thoroughly enjoying the ride that DeWitt took me on. Eli's narration is funny, poignant and insightful. The research helped me to get passed the hurdles that affected some of my fellow book-clubbers. It was a case of a little bit of knowledge going a long way.

A movie starring John C Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal and Joaquin Phoenix is due later this year. I may even be tempted to go and see it.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Home Fire was longlisted for this year's Man Booker and I so wish it had got the nod for the shortlist. It was a stronger, more consistently interesting story than 4 3 2 1, but perhaps the judging committee felt they had ticked the refugee/migrant experience by including Exit West?

Either way it's a shame, because Kamila Shamsie's story is engaging, thought-provoking and quite a page turner. It's easy to read nature beguiles you until you find yourself in the middle of a very serious situation with very heavy consequences. Faith, family, moral dilemma's and parliamentary heavy-handedness clash head-on in this story of choice and consequence.

Shamsie based her story on Sophocles play, Antigone which is the story of a young girl who has to chose between the law (in particular her uncle Creon, the King of Thebes, laws) or her own moral compass. Shamsie was also influenced by Seamus Heaney's play about Creon as imagined through the lens of the Bush administration, The Burial at Thebes (2004).

Shamsie's epigraph referenced Heaney's play which I now see actually highlights her particular focus within this story - love versus law - the faith of her characters simply reflects modern concerns and gives Shamsie's story the contemporary touch.

Knowing the basic premise of the play, meant you also knew how the book would end. Incredibly Shamsie managed to create a lot of tension in the build up to this end. The details of the disaster and it's catastrophic results still caught me by surprise. Being an adaptation, you weren't quite sure how she would follow the original story and which bits she might adapt. Having a slightly different arrangement of main characters also created some doubt about who, what, why and how.

What makes this story work so well though, is that you can read and enjoy Home Fire all on it's own without any knowledge or thought of Antigone at all. Universal themes are universal for a reason!

If the Man Booker was still a Commonwealth only award, I believe that Home Fire would have been the stand-out winner. But that's another debate.