Book review – Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler

Book review – Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler

Title – Back When We Were Grownups

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Anne Tyler

First published – 2001

Edition reviewed – 2002 (Vintage)

Enjoyment rating – 8/10

There are no spoilers in this review

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Review

The novel starts with the sentence, “Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

The woman is fifty-three-year-old Rebecca Davitch, and the whole novel is constructed around this opening sentence. Rebecca wants – needs, even – to know whether the insight is true, and, if it is, what she can do about it.

She seems to be a joyous and extroverted person. Her late husband, Joe Davitch, had owned a large and rather distinguished house that he used as the basis of a business hosting parties; all sorts of parties, from children’s birthday parties to wedding anniversary parties.

“I was very different as a young woman,” thinks Rebecca. “I was quiet and serious. That was the real me.” How had she become such an outgoing person?

Everything had changed when she jilted her studious fiancé in favour of a whirlwind romance leading to marriage to Joe. The novel’s plot is based on Rebecca’s efforts to understand this event. This is worked through carefully and with insight.

There aren’t any sub-plots as such, but Rebecca’s daily life constantly intrudes on her search for understanding and fulfilment. Such is the quality of the writing that every scene from Rebecca’s life tells us more about her character, and more about her true nature.

The novel concludes with a ‘set piece’ of writing, which is an absolute tour de force. It’s an inspired way of finishing the story of Rebecca’s quest. It takes place in the midst of a party (where else?) and it sets the emotional tone perfectly. It’s satisfying, it’s beautiful, and it’s moving. It’s marvellously crafted, and I admire the hell out of it!

Book review – The Miniaturist

Book Review – The Miniaturist, by Jessie Burton

Title – The Miniaturist

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Jessie Burton

First published – 2014

Edition reviewed – 2017, by Picador

Enjoyment rating – 6/10

There are no spoilers in this review

Overview

Petronella (Nella) Brandt is a country girl, the newly-wed bride of wealthy merchant Johannes Brandt of Amsterdam. She arrives in Amsterdam to join a household of four people; her husband, Johannes; his sister, Marin; his man servant, Otto; and his sister’s maid servant, Cornelia. She has to learn how to fit in with the family, each of whom has secrets, in a city whose sole yardstick of value is wealth.

Or is it? Johannes gives Nella a realistic model of her new house as a wedding present. Nella wants model people to occupy it and contacts a miniaturist to make them. When they arrive, they are uncannily accurate and detailed. Furthermore, they seem to reflect events that are happening in the full-size house.

The sins of the present begin to reveal the secrets of the past, not just to the household but to men of power and influence, men who have no reason for covering them up. Slowly a storm of malice raises a surge that threatens to sweep away the household. How much will Nella be able to preserve?

Criticism

Despite its title, the book is not really about the model house, the seemingly prophetic dolls and the woman who makes them – the miniaturist. These are plot devices to keep you turning pages – which they do successfully. They are also part of an extended metaphor about the powerlessness of the inhabitants of the full-size house to be able to shape their own destiny. The miniaturist herself, we discover, is trying to build a professional life in a world where a woman is simply not allowed to do that.

And this is the heart of the novel. It is the struggle by each of the women, Nella, Marin, Cornelia and the miniaturist, to achieve self-realisation in a world where a woman’s only value in society is as a wife and mother.

I don’t think the novel fully delivers on this. It’s a feeling rather than analysis, but the characters’ motivations seem rather sketchy, and perhaps even unlikely. This hinders rather than prevents the development of the reader’s sympathy for the characters, and certainly I felt enough for them that the narrative hooks kept me reading.

Finally, the quality of the writing. Brilliant. Beautiful. Compelling. I’m not going to reveal the climax of the novel, but it’s clearly been constructed with intense care and the effect is dazzling.  

Book Review – The Enchanted April

Book Review – The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim

Title – The Enchanted April

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Elizabeth von Arnim

First published – 1922

Edition reviewed – 1986 (Virago)

Enjoyment rating – 8/10

There are no spoilers in this review

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Do you like sugar? You’ve really got to like sugar if you’re going to enjoy this novel. I might try to excuse this on the grounds that the writing is light and refined, but so is the sugar in candy floss…

Too, some passages are repetitious; we are told certain aspects of people’s characters several times in the course of a few pages. They’re important, but do we really need them hammering home?

So why do I give it an enjoyment rating of 8/10?

First and foremost, it’s a good story well told. The author has plotted it very carefully; indeed it’s as carefully plotted as an Agatha Christie murder mystery. There is no murder, of course, but the same attention to detail is used to highlight the way the different characters think. We are also led to see how these character differences which were miserable in London, were of little or no concern in the romantic setting of the castle of San Salvatore.

Which brings me to my second reason for enjoying the novel; I found the characters both sympathetic and credible. There is tension between them; they are different types of people. The author has taken a lot of trouble to ensure they are consistent. I cared about the characters, which is one of the best possible hooks for holding your reader.

The descriptive writing, especially about the flowers surrounding the castle, is a delight, evoking both the sumptuous visual impact and the gorgeous scents of the flowers.

There is comedy, too. One scene had me giggling at the mental image conjured up by the author.

And throughout the plot, the characters and their development, the descriptive writing and the humour, the author is gently nudging us to consider our prejudices. And it is that element that takes this out of the romantic fiction genre and places it firmly in the literary fiction genre. It has the long aftertaste of a good wine.   

All in all, while this is quite a contrived novel, and very much of its period, and (I can’t stress this too much) it’s sweet, nevertheless it is both an enjoyable read, and a novel which asks questions of the reader.

I can recommend it.

Book Review – Started Early, Took My Dog

Book Review – Started Early, Took My Dog

Title – Started Early, Took My Dog

Genre – Crime fiction

Author – Kate Atkinson

Published – 2010

Enjoyment rating – 7/10

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This novel is a whodunit (indeed, a whodunexactlywhat), combined with a pursuit thriller and leavened with plenty of humour.

A whodunit requires a good plot, and this novel certainly ticks that box. There are numerous characters, and the mystery to be solved is how those figures were involved in a murder and a kidnapping. To make the mystery more difficult, these events took place some thirty years earlier. The novel is told with flashback as a means of revealing the characters and motivations of the principal actors. We know the outline of the solution from early on, but there’s plenty of satisfying detail to hold the interest.

In addition, there is a storyline set entirely in the present day. One of the principal characters, Tracy Waterhouse, was a rookie police officer at the time of the earlier crime; she was one of the officers attending the scene. In a not quite entirely unbelievable way Tracy acquires a small girl, and is then pursued both by those investigating the old crime and those trying to cover it up.

Just in case this isn’t enough for you, the novel is laced with plenty of humour. This is not humour that raises a quiet smirk; it’s laugh out loud stuff. I couldn’t help reading out the funniest bits to anyone who would listen.

The three strands of this novel were ample to pull me in and keep me reading, with the humour ensuring that I enjoyed what I read. The solving of the mystery involved some bloodshed, but this was set in the context of a fairly upbeat emotional resolution to the storylines. Even the obligatory nods in the direction of nihilism were faced down by the author’s fundamental optimism.

The novel has a substantial sub-plot involving an actress, Tilly, who has passed her prime. What does she add to the story? Her story collides with the main plot, but I’m not convinced that this is necessary. In retrospect, I realise I skim-read the passages in which she appeared.

I wasn’t completely happy with characterisation, either. Most of the characters were sketched in with little detail.

The main character (in terms of words devoted to him) is a private investigator named Jackson. Although the author supplies plausible motivations to drive his actions, I don’t find them convincing. I don’t really sympathise with him, either. I don’t wince when he gets beaten up.

Tracy Waterhouse, though, is a different matter. She engaged me from the start, with her laconic humour, and her plethora of little vices. There’s something immediately endearing about a person who regularly buys Thornton’s Viennese truffles as a treat. Her actions are highly unlikely and yet they feel believable, in part because her motivation is the desire to have a child.

She acquires a child, and what a child she is! Wonderfully idiosyncratic in the way of all children everywhere. I could believe in her, no trouble at all.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and it kept me reading which is the first requirement of a novel. Profound it is not. Entertaining it certainly is.

Book Review – NW by Zadie Smith

Book Review – NW by Zadie Smith

Title – NW

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Zadie Smith

Published – 2012

Enjoyment rating – 9/10

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This novel is a tour de force. It’s only a little over 300 pages long, but it took me a full week to complete even though I was reading several hours every day. I wanted to savour Zadie Smith’s writing, which had me hooked from the very first page.

The novel has two principal characters, Leah and Keisha/Natalie. By the end of the first page, Zadie Smith hasn’t told us this; all we know is that one of them has red hair, and a husband, Michel, whose politics differ from hers. What we have instead is dazzling description, a reference to Shakespeare, philosophy, politics and a terrible pun.

If the novel is about anything, it’s about the nature of friendship. Or the nature of love. Or the futility of life. Or a hymn to the tight-knit communities of London villages. Or a dissection of human motivations, in particular the urge to project a consistent narrative about one’s life. Or all of the above.

It is carefully constructed; very carefully indeed. One of the climactic events is foreshadowed at least twice, and yet it’s still a shocking surprise when it comes.

The principal characters are Leah Hanwell, daughter of Irish immigrants and her best friend Keisha who is BAME. We learn of their childhood friendship, and how it evolved from a chance dramatic event. We read how they approach life, Keisha even going so far as to change her name to Natalie to achieve her goal and become a highly paid lawyer. We see how their life-choices take them into quite different social worlds, and yet they retain their childhood friendship.

Men, their thoughts and needs, are not prominent; for example, Natalie’s husband, Frank, is more noticeable by his absences than by his presence. Even Leah’s husband Michel, who is written fairly sympathetically, is excluded from crucial actions by Leah, who decides and acts unilaterally.

The novel portrays men’s principal characteristic as desire for sex and respect. And the novel suggests an answer as to why respect is so important to the men of this community; it is because society, backed by the Establishment, doesn’t show them any. There is a very telling scene where a young man is smoking in a children’s play park. The women, with Natalie prominent, order him to stop; they overwhelm him with their criticism. It is no coincidence that Natalie is a lawyer – here, she symbolises the weight of the Establishment.

But it’s the two women and the constancy of their friendship that is the heart of this novel. Their affection isn’t romanticised; they argue, criticise, even steal, and it’s clear that in many ways they’re very different. And yet the bond is there, unbroken. The novel closes with Leah and Natalie doing something that is the adult equivalent of how they behaved together as teenagers, showing that despite the stress on their friendship, it remains solid.

I have to say, this novel enthralled me. It is so well written, and so thought provoking I’ve returned to it again and again.

Book Review – The Cleaner of Chartres

Book Review – The Cleaner of Chartres

Title – The Cleaner of Chartres

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Salley Vickers

Published – 2012

Rating 6/10

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I enjoyed this novel. It kept me turning the pages. The central character, Agnes Morel, caught my sympathy to the extent that I wanted to know how her story developed. The plot was intriguing, with a twist that took me by surprise.

The novel depicts human nature convincingly. There are good characters and bad characters, weak characters and strong characters, and they play out their roles in a satisfying manner. Skilful writing shows different facets of their personalities, and gives insights into how they became the people they are. Salley Vickers has a humane view of people, and this glows through the way she depicts her cast.

So, why only 6/10?

The problem I have with this book is that it constantly feels like an excellent novel trying to escape from the strait-jacket of one that is run-of-the-mill. It has flaws that reduced my pleasure as a reader.

For example, language. The very first line of the novel is, “The old town of Chartres, around which the modern town unaesthetically sprawls…”. Unaesthetically? Really? I nearly closed the book then and there.

Then the characters. I realised quite soon that I was struggling to remember who was who, so, when I had finished the novel, I counted how many significant characters there were. There were at least eighteen. When reading, I had to make a special effort to identify the characters as they appeared.

Having so many characters brings other problems too, one of which is the characters’ voices. Professor Jones’ voice caught something of the Welsh lilt, but I felt that the voices of most of the characters were inauthentic, or just plain dull.

The central character, Agnes Morel, is attractive. She’s also believable; but only just. Her wardrobe is a strange mix of shabby and glamorous, just as her intellect is a mixture of limited and unusually insightful. More than once she is referred to as a savant, which is fair enough. Her character requires a willing suspension of disbelief, and the writing is strong enough to maintain that.

The novel is written in a mix of contemporary and flash-back, and uses the third person universal point of view. The action takes place in four places, Chartres, Evreux, Le Mans and Rouen. Every chapter is headed with the location so we know where and when the action of the chapter is set. I occasionally found this confusing.

In summary, a good novel, one I could imagine reading again, one which had me thinking about what it is to be human, but a novel with irritating flaws. Definitely worth reading.

Book Review – Hallucinating Foucault

Book Review – Hallucinating Foucault

Title – Hallucinating Foucault

Genre – Literary Fiction

Author – Patricia Duncker

Published 1996

Rating 10/10

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Wow! Just – wow!

I first read this novel about twenty years ago. I was impressed, yes, and some images stayed with me, but I remember feeling uncomfortable and slightly bemused.

In retrospect, I can see why that was; for all sorts of reasons I lacked the emotional generosity to respond authentically to a challenging love story – for, at its heart, ‘Hallucinating Foucault’ is a love story.

It’s a simple, linear narrative, the quest of a young scholar to find and free Paul Michel, the writer whose works have enthralled him.

Or is it?

The quest story lies nestled in a story of old passions; the passion of a man for his first love; the passion of an artist for his art; the passionate need of a writer for his ideal reader. By the time we reach the last page we can see a monumental structure, solid as concrete, against which the hapless scholar has been mercilessly broken. We can make out seductive whispers, just below the threshold of audibility, blaming Fate and denying human responsibility, even as they admit human agency.

We never learn the name of the scholar. It is as though he exists only in relation to Paul Michel. And yet, we care. I cared passionately for him. I shuddered with trepidation as the inevitable denouement approached. I wept at his destruction.

Few books have moved me like this one. Few books have given me such delight by the sheer quality of their writing.

Read this novel for its superlative writing. Read this novel for its insights into human love and life. But, above all, read this novel for pleasure; it’s a delight.

Normal People – a review

Normal People – a review

Author – Sally Rooney

Genre – Literary fiction

Rating – 9/10

This is an outstanding novel that explores the redemptive power of human love.

Marianne and Connell live in a provincial town in Ireland, and have known each other since childhood. Connell is popular; captain of the school football team, and with good social skills. Marianne is unpopular, derided for her looks, her dress sense and her refusal to conform to the social norms of her peers. Connell is poor; Marianne is well off. Both are extremely intelligent.

In their last year at school, they feel a powerful sexual attraction to each other, and make love. The experience reaches a level of intimacy that startles them both – but they conceal this. As far as the world knows they are casual friends.

Although by the time they go to university they have ‘split up’, the attraction is as strong as it ever was. They struggle against it, forming sexual relationships with other partners, but there is always that spark when they meet.  

Gradually we are led to understand how each of them is damaged. Can their relationship survive this? Can it, indeed, save them? For salvation is what they need; the stakes couldn’t be higher. If they get this wrong, they can never fulfil their potential; they will shrivel and die as individuals.

I found the novel gripping. Having read it once, I admired it so much that I read it again intending to learn from it. Lo and behold, I was about three pages in and the story took control again, and I just read it for pleasure. It really is that good!

Review – Magic Seeds by V S Naipaul

Review – Magic Seeds by V S Naipaul

I feel very tentative about reviewing this novel by V S Naipaul – he is, after all, a Nobel laureate, and I have no qualifications other than a love of the world of ideas and the writing of several novels that nobody wishes to publish.
The trouble is, I don’t like the book. I finished reading it, but the further through it I read, the more I was having to grit my teeth.
There are several reasons why.

First and foremost, this is a nihilistic book. It decries human aspiration and emphasises its futility. Only one character achieves his life’s goal, and that goal could be said to be bizarre: the character is an Afro-Caribbean man whose ambition is to have a perfectly white grand-daughter that he can acknowledge publicly. And he is a minor character.

The second reason I dislike the book is that it has a lack of credible emotions. The most glaring examples occur when the protagonist, Willie, is a member of a Maoist cadre in India. On one occasion he is present when his colleague blows out the brains of a man believed to have been an informant. Does Willie feel doubt? Guilt? Fear? Satisfaction? The author doesn’t tell us, doesn’t even hint. On the second occasion, he shoots dead a villager for no reason other than to terrorise the remaining villagers. Once again there is no emotion. Later on in the text, being an accessory to the first death fetches Willie a 10 year prison sentence. Does he think about the person who was killed? Not at all.
I can understand the emotionless killings in the nihilist context of the book. They could be said to be a metaphor for the lack of any value to a human life. One can imagine a psychopath being unemotional about the killings. The trouble is that later on in the novel Naipaul describes sexual relationships between men and women. In these, too, there is a lack of emotion – indeed, the only real emotion described is embarrassment.

The third thing I really dislike about the novel is the politics described towards the end. The poor are described in terms that are disparaging; they are viewed through the lens of far-right politics. This upsets me – but it’s also a flaw in the novel because it’s not true. Not merely is it not true, it neglects the genuine social progress that has been made during the period in which the novel is set – progress that in many cases arises from those who live in social housing who are so denigrated by the novel.

In the world that I see around me, people love, people hate, people feel. Love, especially family love, can work miracles. I don’t find any of that in this book.

The writing is bloody brilliant, of course…

Book Review – Pachinko

Reader rating 8/10

“Pachinko” is a novel about a Korean family who emigrate to Japan. It covers the period from 1910 to 1989, and tells the story of four generations of the family. It’s a novel about racism and oppression. It’s a novel about identity. It’s a novel about what it means to be Korean, and, in particular, a Zainichi Korean who lived in Japan during the twentieth century.

It’s full of drama; a child conceived out of wedlock; several premature deaths, both violent and from natural causes; success and failure; love and hate.

The women are the most interesting characters, and the most resilient in hardship. The central character, Sunja, is the one who keeps the family solvent when circumstances are at their worst. Sunja’s sister-in-law, Kyunghee, becomes her best friend. While Sunja is homely in appearance, Kyunghee is beautiful. The pair are shown maintaining the family, raising the children, and nurturing the men. On several occasions throughout the novel, one of the women will remind the other that ‘women suffer’. This is not said in tones of complaint but in tones of acceptance; this is how it is, and we get on and live our lives regardless. It’s plainly intended to point the reader to the source of the women’s strength.

Much of the action is by the men, and their emotions and motivations often felt obscure to me. In fact, they seem to be emotionally illiterate. This could be deliberate, but personally I found it rather frustrating. I don’t think most men are ignorant of their emotions, they just perceive them differently from women.

The novel is written in plain English; it is not ‘fine writing’. It is, however, effective. Some of the scenes are conjured up vividly. Even so, I wonder whether there could be less explanation. I know most readers will know little. if anything, of Korean or Japanese life, but couldn’t this be told descriptively rather than didactically?

The novel kept my attention by the events; it’s well plotted. However, it was only towards the end that I started to feel emotionally involved. The last scene is very moving, with Sunja grieving in a cemetery before returning to her best friend, Kyunghee.

This is an important novel because of its subject matter. On one level it is a powerful polemic against racial prejudice and discrimination. At a deeper level it looks at the harm such prejudice can cause through the psychological pain caused by the inability to live an authentic life. Perhaps most importantly, the novel gives a voice to a group – the Zainichi Koreans – whose sufferings are not widely known.

This is a book with flaws, but it’s still well worth reading. You may feel tempted to give up halfway through, but I would encourage you to persist – it’s worth the effort. And despite the flaws, I’m rating it 8/10