Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall

By Hilary Mantel

(Note: Before reading, I want to be clear that this post has very little to do with Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall. I know it's the title of the blog post, but I'm feeling tangential.)

When I first started Reading in Taiwan, it was my mission statement that I would anything and everything that fell into my grubby, book-devouring little hands. The thought process was that I was living in a small town on a small, non-English speaking island with the bare minimum of English books at my disposal. It was a great social experiment and for a time it was pretty damned awesome. I read books I would have otherwise never have read. I read romance, fantasy and non-fiction novels about soccer players. I read I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. I was taking one for the proverbial team.

But over the course of three years, things have changed in my neck of the woods. I am not as isolated from the literary world as I once was. A couple of years back my wife was thoughtful enough to buy me a Kindle which made acquiring new books a cinch. Furthermore, acquiring actual bound books made of paper has become a lot easier in Taiwan due to the Internet and 7-11 (God bless 7-11). Nevertheless, I remained resolute in my stubbornness to read anything that came my way and finish everything I started, regardless of how good or bad it was. I mean I read The Story of O when I really didn't have to. I wanted to keep the spirit of the blog intact despite the encroachment of modern technology and increased access to books.

That is, until today.

I was driving home tonight thinking about how I was 40% through Hilary Mantel's 2009 Booker Prize winning novel Wolf Hall. I set the same goal I had set for myself every day this past week: to finish at least 10% before going to sleep. I have accomplished that goal exactly zero times this past week and it suddenly occurred to me that I would not achieve it tonight either, nor tomorrow night nor any night after that. I was staring down another two weeks (minimum) of slogging through Wolf Hall. It felt like the literary equivalent of sitting in a dentist office waiting room waiting for a voluntary, and completely unnecessary, root canal. Why was I subjecting myself to such an avalanche of torture when there are perfectly corpulent books awaiting me on my shelf and Kindle? And considering I was trying to read Wolf Hall quickly just so I could start something new, well, that's a terrible reason to read.

"But what about your mission statement?" I thought to myself.

"A cute but antiquainted dogma," I rebutted. "One rooted in another time. Another place."

"But what will people think when you say you couldn't finish Wolf Hall, a novel that was so celebrated? and why do I sound like Yoda?"

"Care not what people think. Nothing to prove, you have."

(Seriously, this is actually how I think).

The truth is, I was never going to like Wolf Hall. And I should have known.

Don't get me wrong, Wolf Hall is well written and painstakingly researched and probably deserves the Booker Prize for its meticulous (almost obssessive-compulsive) attention to detail alone. But Wolf Hall had three strikes against it right from the start and I should have seen the signs.

First, Wolf Hall is about the English Royal Family in general and unless the novel was written by Bernard Cornwell and is set on a blood-soaked 10th century battlefield in Essex, I'm not interested. As an unwilling citizen of the Commonwealth, I have a knee-jerk disinterest in the Royal Family. Just mention the names of Prince William and whatshername and my mind switches to auto-pilot whereby I continue looking at the speaker and nodding in a polite fashion but internally I have begun to ponder new and interesting ways in which to rip the speaker's tongue from his or her mouth.

Second, Wolf Hall is about Tudor England in specific. As a history major, there are nations and time periods I like better than others and I am hard-pressed to think of a time and place that interests me less than Tudor-era England. (maybe modern day England, but I'll have to run some tests to see which sets off the boredom alarm first and that's a diagnostic I'm in no hurry to run). Give me the Mongol Hordes riding across the Asian steppe or the Early Christian Church fathers or Qing Dynasty China any day of the week. But try to get me excited about Henry disengaging from Rome due to his inability to conceive a son and you've got a recipe for a nap.

Third, the length of the novel was the nail in the coffin. I have a pretty high threshold for shit. I can usually roll my eyes through a bad book just to say I've suffered like Jesus on the cross or something at parties. My mother always called me a masochist, but even I have limits. It's one thing to press on through a 250 page novel you hate. It's quite another to press on through a 700 page novel of the same ilk. I'll force down a bad meal, but I won't eat the leftovers for a week. That's just dumb.

Of course, I want to be clear that I'm not calling Wolf Hall a bad book. It most certainly isn't. It's just not my thing. Not at all. Not even a little.

But all this got me to thinking about novels that I have left unfinished. Surprisingly, in a lifetime of voracious reading the novels I have quit are few and far between. I've read lots of books that seem to pop up on other people's Did Not Finish lists. I've read (and enjoyed) long books like Infinite Jest. I've read difficult books like V. by Thomas Pynchon (I didn't understand it, though) and I've read the entire Old Testament. I've also read my share of terrible novels (Cathy Lamb comes to mind) But when it came to finding books I never actually finished, I could actually only think of six (though I'm sure there are more):

1. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of all the books I have ever hated, I hate this one the most. I hated it from the beginning. I hated the language. I hated the fact that each character took three pages to ask for a cup of tea and I hated Tom Bombadil (seriously... WTF?). I think I dropped this book somewhere around page 400 and have vowed never, ever to pick it up again.

2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: At the age of 16 I had this notion that I was going to become a man of letters or some such nonsense. I determined to read all the great works of literature and I was going to start with The Brothers Karamazov. Great start. I got about 60 pages in, realized I didn't understand a single thing that was going on and I went back to reading Michael Creighton novels. I've been meaning to pick this one up in recent years, but there is always something more interesting on my shelf. I think my 16-year old self has 37-year old me spooked.

3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I love Marquez and I've read several of his other novels, but this one eluded me. Perhaps it had something to do with every character having the SAME GODDAMNED NAME!

4. Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte: I recall literally throwing this novel out my bedroom window with only 40 pages to read. I recall hating it with every fiber of my being but for the life of me, I cannot recall why. As I said before, I'm a masochist, but not so much of one that would willingly revisit this novel to find out why I hated it.

5. The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: Because it's plain terrible.

6. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: I honestly believe that everyone who loves this novel didn't actually read it. It's worse than The Black Arrow.

I can now add Wolf Hall to this esteemed list of personal literary failures.

When God Was a Rabbit

When God Was a Rabbit

By Sarah Winman

The blurb on the back of this novel says:

This is a book about a brother and a sister.  It's a book about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph and tragedy and everything in between. More than anything, it's a book about love in all its forms.

Having read that, I should have known I wouldn't enjoy this book.

OK, I probably should have known from the title. That labored, idiosyncratic title.

Oh, it's not that I don't enjoy books about brothers and sisters or childhoods and friendships, etc. Certainly those themes are the foundation for many a great novel. And certainly I couldn't possibly dislike the novel because it's about love. I'm jaded and cynical, but I haven't lost all of my humanity quite yet. No, the tip-off should have been the short, clipped sentences. I should have seen that this novel was going to make an effort to be clever, quirky and irreverent, which isn't necessarily bad if the novel actually ends up being clever, quirky and irreverent. But it is my experience that every time an author sets out to write a novel that is clever, quirky and irreverent it turns out to be clumsy, awkward and tedious.

When God Was a Rabbit, is clumsy, awkward and tedious.

When God Was a Rabbit is told from the perspective of Eleanor (Elly) and chronicles the childhood and early adulthood of her, her brother Joe and a odd ensemble of friends that include Joe's teenage lover Charlie (who loses an ear in a Middle Eastern hostage crisis), Elly's best friend, Jenny Penny (who is revered by Elly and her clan, but for reasons I must have missed entirely) and a cast of characters that take themselves so terribly, terribly seriously. It is a novel that suffers from a bad case of Cathy Lamb Disease in that it tries to cover literally every social and cultural ill in the entire modern world from sexual abuse and child neglect to gray-area spousal homicide to September 11th. All the while this cast of characters spend their days naval-gazing without a notion toward what it all means.

But I could have handled that if it weren't for Sarah Winsome's hopelessly contrived and frustratingly cumbersome prose. It was like reading an entire novel written in passive voice, from individual sentences, to paragraphs, to chapters and ultimately to the entire narrative itself. My kingdom for an active sentence! My fortune for straightforward plot advancement. If real people talked like the characters in this book, nobody anywhere would understand what the hell was going on at any point, ever. As a reader, one has to learn to read between the lines, but when you are reading between the lines that are between the lines (and in passive voice)... well, there is only so much one reader can take.

And the false endings! I felt like I was reading the literary equivalent of Lynyrd Skynyrd's extended version of Freebird. There were literally dozens of places in which Winsome could have wrapped the narrative up as neat as a bow, but she continued to forge right on ahead into the uncharted territory of unnecessary developments (The entire last twist surrounding the events of September 11th were so forced I had to physically restrain myself from throwing the book out the window). I'm sure someone will tell me that I've missed a metaphorical point (probably something to do with cultural amnesia or some such nonsense) but I'm not listening. Metaphors never, ever trump a good story. And that's what was missing from When God Was a Rabbit... A good story.

Listen, I'm going to be blunt. There is more I could write about the failures of this novel but it isn't really worth the time it has already taken me to write this review. I really hate saying things like that because, as I've said before, anybody who has taken the time and put forth the effort to write a novel deserves the utmost respect (and for that, Sarah Winsome, you have mine... in earnest). But I would be remiss if I were to lie or sugar-coat my loathing for this novel. I'm sure it has garnered excellent reviews somewhere (I declined to check) and you certainly shouldn't base your decision about whether to read this novel or not on my blog post. But be forewarned, if you have found that my reviews jive with your reading tastes, this novel is one that might be best left on the bookshelf.

Or better yet, the remainder bin.

Oh well, it's still better than Henry's Sisters.

The Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending

By Julian Barnes

"History isn't the lies of the victors ... It's more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated." -- Julian Barnes, A Sense of an Ending.

From a reviewers standpoint, it's probably not a good idea to read an author for the first time if the book you choose to read has won the Booker Prize. Most importantly, it sets the reviewer up for possible disappointment should they reach into said author's back catalog to find other titles (I say possible disappointment because, as we all know, just because a novel wins a Booker Prize does not mean it is the best novel ever written by that author... but it's probably a good bet). But only slightly less important is the manner in which the reviewer is able to accurately review the novel in relation to their work prior.  Of course, even the most voracious reviewers can't possibly read everything by everyone, so these things have to be taken with a grain of salt.

A Sense of an Ending is Julian Barne's 11th novel. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2011. It is the first novel that I have ever read by Julian Barnes. I have read exactly zero titles from the 2011 Booker shortlist (though I've had Half Blood Blues on my shelf for a dogs age). How exactly do I express myself about this novel? It's good. Really good. Of course it is. It won the Booker Prize. Did I mention that? You don't get nominated for the Booker Prize unless your novel has some artistic merit (and I'm going to ignore the hairsplitting nonsense coming from the literati in their dusty offices. Put them in a room full of Cathy Lamb novels for a year and see what they think of Julian Barnes after that). So I'm going to try and make sense of his novel as a stand alone novel as opposed to a piece in a larger body of work or as a nominee for the award that it won. I am trying, but I haven't read everything.... yet.

The Sense of an Ending is a deeply introspective look into the past of Tony Webster, a retired man living alone somewhere in London. He has lead a relatively mediocre life (what is it with me and novels about mediocrity lately? I'm going to steer away from that theme this time around. Promise). Job, marriage, child, divorce.  He has a past, and spends a good deal of the novel recalling the trivial moments of youth in the days leading up to his life's one great tragedy.

The novel is divided into two parts. The first part chronicles Webster's past as he remembers it, among a clique of three other boys, one of which is a precocious boy named Adrian who fancies himself a bit of a philosopher (actually they all do, but Adrian seems more devoted to the craft). Webster recalls his first years at the University of Bristol where he begins dating a woman by the name of Veronica whom he neither marries nor harbors particular fondness for in his old age, an excruciatingly awkward visit to Veronica's family house and the eventual tragedy that becomes the vortex of the entire narrative. None of these things are particularly related.

But of course they are.

Part Two turns the entire first half of the book on its head when Tony, now in his early sixties, receives a bequeathment of five hundred pounds from Veronica's mother upon her death, despite the fact that he has only met her the one time (at the aforementioned awkward visit) and has neither communicated with her nor Veronica in almost half a century. What follows is a stunning meditation on the nature of history and memory, how one man's recollections can be entirely different (almost polarized in some circumstances) from what others recall. Those that have hitherto been viewed as manipulators or instigators. The events of his past that seemed so trivia in retrospect become the groundwork for the great tragedy in Tony's life.

The novel is essentially a discourse on perspective and perception, neither of which are qualities found in Tony. In fact, as we read, it becomes apparent that Tony is not even remotely capable of seeing the forest for the trees. So much so that the enigmatic (and often frustrating) Veronica is reduced to trite Hollywood-isms ("You just don't get it, do you?) by the end of the novel as she bangs her head against the wall trying to get Tony to see what he will not see. In this respect, Tony is outed for the manifestly ordinary man he has spend his life trying to disguise.

Barnes is trying to tell us something. What, exactly, is never precisely laid out for the reader, but it's all in there, more or less. from the cryptic equations in Adrian's diary to the long, slow (almost painfully so) reveal over the last 20 pages, Barnes warps with perception and recollection in a way that would confound most writers. However, by keeping the story on an arrow-straight trajectory he gives the reader ample opportunity to flip back and compare notes with earlier passages much in the same way a repeat viewer of the Sixth Sense might pick through the plot with a fine toothed comb. I haven't had the chance to do that myself, but I can imagine it would be a great deal of fun to do so.

But for all its philosophical acrobatics, The Sense of an Ending is an engaging and extremely readable novel. At exactly 150 pages, I read the entire book in a single sitting, something my attention span and two month old daughter let me do too often these days. I can't resist books that strike deep into philosophical territory without sacrificing character and story. It is a mark of truly excellent book if the writer can walk that line between meaningful human discourse and solid entertainment value. Julian Barnes does it with skill and style. I can't wait to read his novels that haven't won the Booker Prize.

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day

By Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the third Kazuo Ishiguro novel I have read in the past twelve months. If there is one overriding theme throughout them (the others being An Artist of the Floating World and Never Let Me Go) it is that Ishiguro is not interested in the story that appears on his page so much as he is interested in the story going on in your head whilst you are reading the words he put on his page. More directly, Ishiguro's novels are about the story not being told as opposed to the story being told. Furthermore, like his other novels, The Remains of the Day may not even really be about what it's about but rather may be an elegantly crafted metaphor about something entirely different. If I've sufficiently confused you, good. Let's get on with it, then.

The Remains of the Day is Ishiguro's third novel. Published in 1989, it was the winner of that year's Man Booker Prize and has garnered the status of classic since then, and for good reason. The novel is a thematic work of genius that examines (but doesn't examine) the subjects of dignity, loyalty and social constraints in post-colonial Great Britain as well as being a metaphor for the very same Great Britain.

The story centers upon Stevens, the butler of Darlington Hall, an old country house occupied by a preeminent English gentleman prior to World War II but currently (1956) owned by an American who bought the house (complete with authentic English butler) after the death of its former occupant. The story is ostensibly about short motor car trip undertaken by Stevens from Darlington Hall to the West Country in order to visit a former colleague. The story progresses as a series of journal entries along the way in which Stevens elucidates on the finer points of the domestic services industry and what (not who) makes a good butler. He also recounts several key events that occurred during his tenure at Darlington Hall that speak volumes about himself, his staff, his employer and the world around him. Though Stevens seems like a trustworthy character and one would hardly call his judgment into question, one must continuously question his ability to recall instances with the clarity this story requires. This gives the entire narrative a subconscious haze that must be navigated at all times.

The entire narrative is written in the stiff colonial language of the gentleman class and Stevens, like the people he has worked for in the past is obsessed with how he is perceived. Language and decorum are , therefore, tools in his profession as a way in which to cultivate an air of dignity benefiting a house such as Darlington Hall. ItThey are also self-constructed walls of social and class constraint that willingly bind Stevens to the house and the gentleman therein, regardless of his own opinions.

In lieu of thinking for himself, Stevens adopts an unconditional trust in his employer. Loyalty, dignity and professionalism trump all personal issues. In one particular scene which plays out as both comedy and tragedy, Stevens carries out his duties on a especially busy evening while his father falls ill and dies. It is an apt description of the social constraints that bound the class conscious British between the wars.

Buried deep within the bedrock of Steven's recollections is a more personal account of Darlington Hall's housekeeper, Miss Kenton. It becomes plainly apparent to the reader that Miss Kenton and Stevens have significant feelings for one another, but their professionalism, coupled with Steven's inability to read subtlety and nuance (to the point that I began to think Stevens might simply be mildly autistic, but I'll leave the psychological analysis of this novel to more capable reviewers) conspire to keep them apart. Even when a simple word or gesture might have broken the proverbial ice, they remain colleagues throughout, much to the consternation of this reader.

There are a lot of levels from which a reader might read this novel, but the most interesting (at least for me) was that The Remains of the Day is a brilliant metaphor for the end of the British Empire. In fact, the metaphor is so apparent (once you notice it) that it rivals Animal Farm in its bluntness. The novel itself is set in 1956 and although it is never mentioned in the book, that year coincides with the nationalization of the Suez Canal by General Nasser in Egypt. In Great Britain, the loss of the canal marked the end of the Empire. The era of the gentleman, country houses and the butler was over and Stevens himself is has become a relic of the past, a quirky historical curiosity sold along with a house to an American with a great deal of knowledge about colonial Britain but no idea how to actually be a gentleman.

But at a deeper level it is a social commentary on the relationship between crown and Empire. Lord Darlington represents the crown and the butler Stevens represents the Empire in this exquisite analogy of pre- and post-war Britain. Much like the pre-war British colonies in Asia and Africa, Stevens places an undue and undeserved amount of trust in Lord Darlington only to find that, in the end, Lord Darlington was involved in affairs far beyond his scope of understanding. Indeed, Lord Darlington represents a bygone England and his views are not even remotely in tune with the times. Naturally, Stevens remains unconcerned with his lord's affairs and serves him any way he can.

When war breaks out and Darlington finds himself on the wrong side of the line, it is Stevens that suffers most. And when Lord Darlington passes away, Stevens remains, left alone to pick up the pieces under the watchful eyes of an American. The parallels between this story and the demise of the Empire are so plentiful it probably merits a second reading at a later date.

The fact that Kazuo Ishiguro can write novels with so much nuance and subtlety is extraordinary. It takes a very gifted writer to write novels that work on a multitude of levels. Off the top of my head I can only think of a handful that have that capacity. I would hazard a guess that this novel wouldn't appeal to everyone due to its verbosity and pace (it is rather slow in bits) but The Remains of the Day really pays off in the end. I know that Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children has been deemed the Booker of Bookers but I'd give the nod to The Remains of the Day as the best Booker winner I've ever read.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

By Helen Simonsen

I had no business taking as long as I did to finish this novel and this novel had no business being as good as it ended up being.

First, I'm sorry for the extended time lapse between books. I may have been excused had it been a 1000 page opus or something by Thomas Pynchon but alas, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a solidly average 360 pages and not terribly difficult to understand. I'd like to say I've been busy but the fact is, July and August are my slowest months at work and I've had heaps of time to read. I felt like I was reading my usual amount but it never seemed as if I was getting anywhere in this book.

Anyway, I'm done now, so let's see what's what.

Part of the blame for my slow read is that I initially despised this book. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is, loosely, the story of a retired British major named (you guessed it!) Pettigrew. Major Pettigrew is a widower who lives modestly in a seaside English village in Sussex. He is a stereotype of the colonial variety. Stiff upper lip, rigid spine and calculated remarks ("Good show, old chap! Hup, hup!"). He dislikes much of modern society and diminutives. The rest of the characters in the novel (Major Pettigrew's fellow villagers) didn't seem any less simplified. Characters from a bygone age of honor, title and Empire. Characters with ridiculously outdated notions propriety as they mindlessly live out their orderly lives in bigoted conceit.

Superimposed over the village is a community of modern British citizens of Pakistani descent and more recent immigrant arrivals from the subcontinent (all the same to the English-born villagers, of course). These two communities have developed a symbiotic working relationship (a mutual respect for distance) in town but don't much mix. Despite their differences, the two communities have much in common but interaction between the two communities remains nothing more than an updated version of the colonial system in British India (where Major Pettigrew's father served). The relationship is understood... that is until Major Pettigrew falls for the lovely Mrs. Jasmina Ali, owner of a downtown shop.

As I read, it was precisely the things I disliked about the book, the oversimplified characters, the impossibly elitist antagonists, the over-the-top snobbishness and the sheer pretentiousness of it all that finally sucked me in. Once I found my bearings in this novel and realized that Helen Simonsen was taking the Major about as seriously as I was, I began to fall for him. It was a riot reading about how ultra-traditional colonial era English townspeople would handle the complex problems of modern society, specifically the risks undertaken by individuals in the face of tradition and family.

What's interesting is the way in which Simonsen compares the fierce traditional values of a Muslim family with those of a traditional English family. Despite the fact that we tend to identify one culture as free and democratic and the other as oppressive, at their hearts both traditions have the ability to stifle and suppress. There is a correct way in which to deal with specific situations and rarely does one stray from these social expectations.

What's more, once I got suckered into these characters I found myself sympathizing with them more often than not. Turns out these crown and country folk (well, the Major in particular) have a lot to say and much of it makes a lot of sense. I especially enjoyed the relationship between the Major and his hopelessly modern son Roger (another juxtaposition of culture: generational) who seems to think he knows exactly what is good for his elderly father. I particularly love the way in which Simonsen sets up her characters for their comeuppance. If you are going to write stereotype, make sure they are treated as such.

At its heart, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is a wonderful comedy of manners in the style of P.G. Wodehouse and Noel Coward. There are enough slapstick antics throughout to appease Oscar Wilde (or Basil Faulty) himself. Although the tone finds a more serious track in the final third of the novel where the realities of the dysfunctional Muslim family infiltrate the narrative with more force, Simonsen never loses sight of her comedic objectives and maintains enough humor and dry wit to counterbalance the shifting tone. It's the literary equivalent of walking the edge of the chalk cliffs of Sussex. In lesser hands I fear that the story might have slipped and lost its footing.

As it turns out Ms. Simonsen has as much stiff upper lip as the Major.

Good show!

The Pregnant Widow

The Pregnant Widow

By Martin Amis

There is a right way and a wrong way to introduce yourself to an author with a long and illustrious career. When I read John Updike's Rabbit, Run a few weeks back, that was an example of how to do it. Start somewhere near the beginning of their career and work your way forward. The Pregnant Widow is a perfect example of how not to do it. Finding the most recent novel by said writer and hope to catch up by the end of that book. It's just not fair to the writer or yourself.

It is difficult to express the range of emotions that Martin Amis' most recent novel, The Pregnant Widow, evoked in me. I am not a member of Amis's generation. I wasn't even alive during the 1960s and AIDS closed the door on the hedonism of the 1970s when I was just starting elementary school. The fact that I grew up in a suburban town in Canada only increases the disconnect. It was hard for me to fully empathize with the characters in this novel, though the themes within are timeless and the autobiographical nature of this novel is heartbreaking I finished the book feeling like I missed something. I would suspect it would be the first 30 years of Martin Amis's career, but I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Like Amis's career, The Pregnant Widow is a novel that spans four decades. Much of the action in the novel centers on the summer of 1970 at the height of the sexual revolution. Keith Nearing (aka Martin Amis in literary disguise) is spending the summer cloistering himself in a castle in Italy with his girlfriend, the ever dependable Lily, and a host of other young, nubile people, including Scheherazade, an impossibly statuesque beauty that Keith falls hopelessly and madly in love with.

The story progresses in classic comedy of errors style (with elements of Philip Roth-esque depravity and discomfort with a touch of Three's Company style humor). The story is rife with sexual tension as Keith stumbles and bumbles in his attempts to bed the recently "liberated" Scheherazade who, like the other women summering at the castle, is known to prance around the pool topless (and often bottomless). But Keith's litany of neuroses and hang-ups are his undoing. Upon "striking out" with Scheherazade the story flies wildly off the rails in search of a meaningful ending (and if there is one fault with this book it is the last third, much of which I questioned the need for). It was at this point that I felt I was lacking some of Amis's prior work as color for this particular novel.

Along the way, Amis introduces us to a parade of interesting characters including a 4 foot 10 inch accident prone Italian, a gold digging socialite and, my favorite, Jorquil, a foppishly hilarious count who (I imagined) walks around the pool with neck-straining medallions and a hairy chest that would make Tom Selleck blush.

At its heart The Pregnant Widow is a novel about narcissism. The narrator of the novel is none other than Keith (and, by extension, Martin Amis's) superego. What could be more narcissistic than a novel narrated by one's superego? This is my first Martin Amis novel but from what I understand, Amis has explored the narcissist on several occasions in previous works, so I think he's got a good handle on the subject matter. There's a reason Amis's generation is called the Me Generation and it is unapologetically on display in this novel, not that there's anything wrong with that. Keith represents Amis who, through this story seems to be self-examining and re-evaluating his past from the perspective of a man with a lifetime's worth of regret.

This novel may not do much in helping the reader decide who they are in the present tense but it does do a good job of examining who we were (and when I say we, I mean those of my mother's generation mores than my own). There is a sense within this novel that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was a panacea our ailing, stiff collared society. Sexual liberation was to be the "end of history" in a sense and everything thereafter would be different. Of course, almost half a century we know this is categorically not the case. In fact, the latter third of the novel explores the notion that not only did sexual liberation not herald Arcadia, it also served a soupçon of its own problems in return.

One such sexual casualty is examined the pulsing subplot involving Keith's sister Violet. While only hinted at during the first half of the novel, Violet returns over and over in the latter half of the novel as a (perhaps) anti-thesis to the notion of narcissism.  In 1970, Violet is an psychologically under-developed young girl with the beginnings of very real problems with alcohol and promiscuity. As the novel progresses, Violet fleshes out into a full blown tragedy. Along with Keith's parade of failed relationships and marriages, Violet is the very essence of how the 1960s went all wrong.

(Tangentially, Violet is a thinly-veiled (one might say not veiled at all) depiction of Martin Amis's real life sister, Sally Amis, a woman and tragic case who has been characterized in many of Amis's novels. In this sense, Violet is a perfect example of a victim of the sexual revolution).

This novel was at point blazingly brilliant, at others a meandering slog, but perhaps this was my fault. As an introduction to the work of Martin Amis, I'm not sure this was the best choice. When tackling an author with a canon as large as Mr. Amis one is perhaps not advised to read his most recent offering. I continuously thought I was missing out on parts of this novel that I couldn't possibly understand without having read his previous novels. Having done a little research I confirmed that The Pregnant Widow is an extension of a lifetime of work. It's an excellent book, no doubt and it should have been short-listed for the Booker Prize, but if you haven't read any of his previous work, I would suspect that you, like me, will come away from this book slightly unfulfilled.

___

Shout Out

Since I am completely dedicated to the continuity of this blog (I really like that all my blog posts coincide with a book finished) I am forced to put this little idea of mine down at the bottom of my posts (to paraphrase Jesus: Nobody fucks with the continuity). I want to start adding a link at the end of my blogs to other bloggers who are currently peaking my interest. A glance into what I'm surfing. If you've read this far, I strongly urge you to visit these blogs.

First up, the sublimely eclectic Books & Bowel Movements. I honestly think this is one of the most ingeniously written blogs out there. Check it out. You won't be disappointed.

An Artist of the Floating World

An Artist of the Floating World

By Kazuo Ishiguro

What I enjoy most about Kazuo Ishiguro novels is the manner in which he compels the reader to continue reading without much notion of what, exactly, they are reading. Last year, when I finally got around to reading Never Let Me Go, I was fascinated by the way in which he maintained interest without ever telling the reader what was going on. The first person narrative style assumes the reader is familiar with the world Ishiguro has created and thus it is up to the reader to piece much of the story together over the course of the novel. Certainly Ishiguro is not the first nor, by any means, the only author that maintains an element of mystery via exclusivity in his narrative, but he does it with such skill and grace I have been excited to read another of his novels ever since.

Ishiguro's 1986 novel An Artist of the Floating World (short-listed for the Booker Prize) is very similar to Never Let Me Go in structure and style, if not story. Set during the immediate post-war years in an unidentified city in Japan, the narrative focuses on an aging artist by the name of Ono who is struggling with his role as an artist during the war while trying to arrange a suitable marriage for his aging (she's... GASP! 26!) daughter. He worries that his past may have contributed to the failure of a past arranged marriage whose negotiations fell through for unknown reasons.

Much like Never Let Me Go, the entire novel is a joy to read on both a narrative and stylistic level. Ishiguro is a well-honed wordsmith. His sentences are pregnant with poignancy and wonderfully crafted works of art unto themselves. He writes sentences as silky smooth as the refined Japanese world of his story. I forget who said this, but an author once noted that a great work of fiction can be measured by opening a book to any page and reading that page (out of context) as a stand-alone piece of poetry. By such standards, Ishiguro is a genius.

But, in this novel at least, it is his dialogue that takes center stage. Ishiguro writes all the dialogue in a sort of refined, highly polished Japanese that leaves the reader wondering not what has been said, but rather what has been said while not being said. Young people let elders dictate the direction of the conversation, never contradict what his said and always downplay or deflect any praise given. The dialogue is worth the price of admission itself. Each dialogue is two, often three conversations at once and it's a joy to read between the lines and try to cut through to the core of what is being said.

Ono seems rather unsure of his ability to recall his past. He is often muddled about the order of events or the exact phrasing of something an old colleague might have said. This unreliability adds to the uncertainty of the narrative in that we cannot fully trust our protagonist, not because he may be lying but rather because he is simply fallible. It is therefore difficult for us to believe much of what he says and thinks about his own career. In this respect, Ono reminded me a lot of Barney Panofsky in Mordecai Richler's classic, Barney's Version... though with less lechery and more grace.

Ishiguro also explores the nature of art in society. He questions its importance (very important) and compares that to the importance of art through the eyes for the artist (inflated). As the story progresses we discover that Ono, despite what he has told us, is not the influential artist he seems to believe he is. While most certainly talented and well respected within a segment of the art world, he comes to realize that unlike politicians and businessmen, artists were never and would never be held accountable for the atrocities committed during the war, and for good reason. While artists did attempt to capture the over-arching emotions and ideas of a time, there is never a sense that the artist's neck is threading a noose via their work. Ono's sense of self-importance had lead him to believe that his art was something to be ashamed of and a serious detriment to his family's future when in fact very few people remember him at all. In time, Ono comes to terms with his marginality, an indication of his acceptance of the shift away from Imperial decadence that was occurring in post-war Japan.

In this respect, Ono represents the older Imperial generation while his daughters and grandson represent the newer, democratic generation unimpressed with the lavishness of their fathers. Throughout the novel Ono refers to something called the "floating world," a scene of opulence and self-aggrandizement throughout the 1920s and 30s that occupied the artistic world of Imperial Japan. In the wake of the war, there began a shift away from such a lifestyle toward simplicity. Due to this shift, there exists a latent tension (but in true Japanese style, no overt conflict) between generations as Ono cannot understand how Japan can change itself wholesale overnight from what it was to what it is. He insightfully muses that perhaps we are discarding the good with the bad and Japan shouldn't be so hasty to sidle up to the Americans.

This juxtaposition is best exemplified in the wonderful scenes between Ono and his eight-year-old grandson Ichiro. A fan of Popeye Sailorman (sic) and the Lone Ranger, the precocious (and mildly disrespectful) Ichiro is the very personification of the post-war Japanese infatuation with American life. He doesn't seem intimidated by his elders while Ono laments the fact that he is so very much out of touch with his grandson's world.

An Artist on the Floating World isn't covering new literary ground, but it is treading old ground with a fresh pair of geta. Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese by descent but raised in England, has attested to the fact that he knows very little about Japan and cannot be considered a Japanese writer,. Nevertheless, this novel is an interesting insight into a very interesting period in Japanese history and Ishiguro has done well to characterize the period and its uncertainties and insecurities. Whether or not the novel is historically accurate (I cannot say whether it is or not) he captures the emotions of the time in a bubble and packaged them with a deft hand for our consideration.

And, after all, isn't that what art is for?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

By John Le Carré

In case you are wondering, John Le Carré is not going to hold your hand. Not even for one page.

You'd be well served to do your homework before attempting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carré's classic Cold War spy novel featuring the enigmatic George Smiley and the first novel in his Karla Trilogy. You are going to need all your knowledge about Cold War era espionage to decipher this narrative, but I'll come back to that in a bit, but first a little background. Unlike Le Carré, I will hold your hand (and take you out for a nice steak dinner, if you are inclined).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy progresses via a series of flashbacks and tracks the history of the Circus (the in-house name of M16, the Secret Intelligence Service). After an agent engages in a love affair with the wife of a Soviet intelligence officer in Hong Kong, it becomes apparent that the British office has been infiltrated by a mole. Smiley has the unenviable task of ferreting out the mole, spying on the spies as it were. The title of the novel are the code names given to the potential spies in the British intelligence service. A trap is set, the culprit is apprehended and there's a neat little twist ending that... oh who am I kidding? I have no idea how this book ended. I finished it, but I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is considered a classic in the spy genre and was recently made into a film starring my favorite actor of all time, Gary Oldman, as George Smiley. the film garnered several Academy Award nominations including a Best Actor nod for Oldman (good for him!). I can't vouch for the film, though because I haven't seen it and after reading the novel, I have no plans to do so (even if it does have Gary Oldman... I'm not a fanboy). That's how much this novel frustrated me.

I's not no idjit, ya hear? But I couldn't make heads nor tails of this book. It was borderline nonsense to me. Entire chapters would go by and I had no idea what had just happened. At times I felt like I was reading a foreign language. I'm not the sort to be intimidated by a novel and I'm more than comfortable diving into classic novels that others find weird, verbose or abstract (I've read and enjoyed Naked Lunch, Vurt and Pussy, Queen of the Pirates, I'll have you know!). But even with the Wikipedia page and other sorts of cliff notes, I had trouble understanding this book. I realized there were flashbacks and I could follow the storyline at times. but there seemed to be a never-ending chorus line of minor characters and pointless tangents. It was an overload of information!

And the jargon, my GOD! I was constantly going back to find out that the hell a lamplighter or shoemaker or a janitor was. It was infuriating. I found myself drifting off for pages at a time and not really caring about what I had missed. Not a good sign when reading.

Now, I know that John Le Carré is a well respected spy novelist and I'm not going to go so far as to disrespect the man on this blog like I did to Cathy Lamb. Salman Rushdie is not everyone's cup of tea, but his reputation affords him some wiggle room from people who don't like his work (even from Ayatollahs). I think I owe Le Carré the same courtesy. So, instead of rambling on about why I didn't like this book, I'd like to hear from anyone out there that did like this book and why? Given its stature as a classic, there must be more than a few people out there that love this book. I'm addressing you! What did I miss here? How could I have read this book differently and enjoyed it? Really! I hate it when I don't get it but....

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? I don't get it.

(It does have a cool cover, though).

Atonement

Atonement

By Ian McEwan

I broke a cardinal rule.

I'm a fairly disciplined individual who likes to live by a certain set of rules, most of them self-imposed (I have no idea why I seem to function better via self-discipline, but I do). I have self-imposed rules is virtually every facet of my life. It helps me stay organized. It helps me stay focused and it keeps me out of a lot of trouble I would otherwise find myself in (read: no alcohol on weekdays).

I have rules for reading. Some of them cardinal. One of my cardinal rules is that I must read every day. This is a rule I have not broken in over three years. Most days I read in the vicinity of 50-100 pages depending on how interesting the book is, font size and time. I also never leave a book unfinished, no matter how bad it is. Oddly enough, because of these rules I tend to read books quicker if they are bad. I can't set them aside or put them down, so I blast through trash as quickly as I do gems.

Another cardinal rule is that I never, ever read a book if I have already seen the movie. Like I wrote in a previous blog, I don't often go to movies, but I have seen a few along the way. I generally avoid novel adaptations figuring that I might one day like to read the book. Plus, I think that movies and novels should be mutually exclusive. Just cause a segment of the population doesn't want to take the time to read a story we should have to pander to them by making good books into sub-par movies.

But I digress.

I've seen Atonement. I can't for the life of me remember having seen it, but I have. I know I saw it because it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars a few years back and it was one of those years where I decided to watch all the nominees (before they went to ten nominees and I completely lost interest). I remember because that was the year of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two movies I actually liked a lot and I watched them back to back. A rarity.

Despite the fact that the novel was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2001, I wouldn't have even bothered to pick Atonement up if I weren't so desperate. But I've been reduced to Douglas Coupland and Crime and Punishment on my bookshelf, neither of which are all that enticing. Breaking a cardinal rule and reading Atonement seemed like a better alternative to either of my other options and I figured the book would give me some insight into the characters that appeared in the movie (once I remembered the plot).

Well, it didn't really matter. Even at the end of the book I could not recall a single scene from the movie and the plot was completely unfamiliar (I don't watch movies drunk and I'm not prone to blackouts, so I'm at a loss for how this happened). In a way, I lucked out. I got a first-time read out of Atonement, and it turns out that it's a pretty decent read... if a bit plodding.

The first half of the novel center around Briony, a foolish young girl who fancies herself a writer of fairy tales and has her head firmly entrenched in her own fantasy world Through a series of tragic misunderstandings and misinterpretations, Briony mistakenly vilifies her older sister's (Cecilia) lover (Robbie) for a crime he did not commit, sending him to prison and social disgrace.

the second half of the novel fast-forwards a few years into the early days of World War II and the evacuation of Dunkirk. Briony reappears as a slightly older, slightly less foolish girl who works in London as a nurse. Robbie has spent time in prison and Cecilia has broken all ties with her family over the false accusation. Over time, Briony has realized the severity of her deception and has developed an overwhelming desire to set things straight and clear Robbie's name. At this point it's best to stop. I will not spoil the end. The plot is thin but what McEwan lacks in events he more than makes up for in emotional and psychological deconstruction.

McEwan explores the depths of some pretty intense human emotions, especially love, hate, guilt, shame, redemption and, well, atonement. It offers a wonderful introspection on the relationship between truth and fiction, love and hate as well as war and peace. McEwan balances between these dichotomies with a deft hand. It's a book deserving of the accolades it has received and a tour de force for the author. a must read for anyone who enjoys books that explore the depths of human emotions and the complexities of familial relationships.

I was truly surprised by this book and glad I broke a rule to read it. I figured it was the sort of book that would instantly hate but it turns out it is a very readable book. Perhaps I should break more of my rules.

Recommended. (Just don't see the movie. It's entirely forgettable).

A Long Way Down

A Long Way Down

By: Nick Hornby

I recall reading once that Margaret Atwood loved Mordecai Richler's new novel. She enjoyed it every time he published it. I have struggled to find the source of this quote (therefore the paraphrasing) and I'm not sure if she really said it, but even if I imagined it, it holds a good dollop of truth about Richler, and so many others.

While I love Mordecai Richler, I find myself agreeing with this (alleged) quote. It is a more concise way of verbalizing my theory on Diminishing Returns in Literature. I nicked the idea from the original Law of Diminishing Returns, the economic law that is, and I understand how the economic theory works, basically. My theory is only marginally akin to its economic brethren due to my complete lack of interest in economic theory, so please bear with me.

Essentially, my law of diminishing returns states that an artist (in whatever oeuvre) creates something that awes and inspires his or her audience. It could be their first piece or their fifty-first piece, it doesn't matter. if it is the audience's first exposure to said art, it typically impresses. The audience is then compelled to explore more of the artist's body of work and, while still impressed, each successive piece experienced by the audience impresses slightly less until such time that the audience comes to the realization that the artist will never again give the them the same feeling they got from the first piece they saw.

Another way of explaining it would be to compare it to heroin or cocaine (although having never tried either of these narcotics, I'm working from hearsay). Users frequently say that their very first hit of heroin or cocaine is better than any feeling they have ever experienced and that addiction stems from their eternal pursuit of that same "first time" feeling, which they never get again. While I'm not a junkie, I do understand this concept.

It happens in music (Radiohead), film (The Coen Brothers) and television (The Simpsons). A radiohead virgin listening to any Radiohead album (pick one, any one, really) will immediately love it to bits. They will then like each subsequent album they hear significantly less, not because they are worse, but because they are all essentially the same. My first exposure to Radiohead was The Bends and it has remained my favorite. But this blog is about books and the most obvious literary example I can think of for my diminishing returns theory is Tom Robbins.

The first Tom Robbins novel I ever read was Jitterbug Perfume and I can honestly say that it is one of a small number of books that changed my life. I can't say exactly how, but upon finishing that book I felt like I had come through something and was somehow different, more whole, more in touch. Perhaps imperceptibly, but changed nonetheless. I have two friends who say they had the same experience after finishing Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, respectively. It doesn't matter which Tom Robbins book you read, it just has to be the first one. That will forever be: The One. All others will fail to attain the same status.

I have read virtually everything Robbins has written and each subsequent novel has impressed me less and less. It's not that I read the best one first, it's that they are all essentially the same and, therefore, aren't equipped to hit me as hard as the first one ever did. They aren't bad, they're just not Jitterbug Perfume.

The same can be said of Richard Russo. I read Empire Falls first and each successive novel impressed me less because they were structurally the same. And as much as it pains me to say it, Margaret Atwood (if she did indeed say it) is right about Mordecai Richler. I read Barney's Version first and went backwards from there. Each novel seemed like a variation on Barney. I suspect those that read the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz or Joshua Then and Now would say the same about Barney's Version. Other authors that fall into this category include Irving Welsh, Ben Elton, Leon Uris and Douglas Adams (sorry).

Well, add Nick Hornby to this list. I loved High Fidelity when I first read it about a decade ago. That book spoke to me, a certifiable music snob, like very few others could. Fever Pitch was pretty good too. Although I don't share Hornby's obsession with English football, I do understand obsession (mine is hockey). About a Boy was fine, How to Be Good was forgettable (in fact I picked up How to Be Good about a month ago and it took me 40 pages to realize I had already read it) and A Long Way Down was painful.

OK, it wasn't painful as such, but it was just sort of the same as all his others. I have nothing against Nick Hornby. He's literary elite, a rock star among writers with nothing to prove. He's found a formula that works for him and he has to tell his stories the best way he can and I respect him for that. Having never written a novel, who am I to say that he's fallen into a rut. It's just that I can't imagine picking up another Hornby book only to fall into another world filled with Hornby's hipper than hip characters.

One might argue that the literary law of diminishing returns is too critical. Perhaps we should just take solace in knowing what you will get from some authors. A literary comfort zone so to speak. But I know what I'm going to get from Kurt Vonnegut and Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth but they never fail to amaze me, book after book after book...

Aw, hell. Perhaps I'm simply as jaded as a Nick Hornby character. I think its time to read some non-fiction. Wash the palette clean.

Hater

Hater

By David Moody

These days, it is rare that I finish a book in a single sitting. The conditions required for such an event (readable book + large, uninterrupted chunks of time) are not easy to come by. I'm a busier man and a more jaded reader than I was when I read Johnny Got His Gun in a single six hour sitting at the age of sixteen (or A Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy hours before a final exam in first year university). In fact, I haven't read many books in a single sitting. This probably has a lot to do with why I can't sit still for movies, either.

As it turns out the conditions necessary for a single-day read were ideal yesterday. We were having some screen doors and windows installed at our house and, in true Taiwanese fashion, the workers told us they would come by sometimes between 8am and 4pm. Typical.

I cleared my Monday schedule (Monday is actually a light day for me, anyhow) in anticipation for the long wait and picked up Hater by David Moody. It's been on my shelf for a few months. It was given to my by a friend who never really endorsed it or recommended it, just handed it over and told me I might like it. I didn't much like the cover and I hadn't bothered to find anything out about it so I always managed to pick something else up in the meantime. By yesterday it had become a festering sore on my bookshelf. It had been there so long it was actually offending me. So I opened the damned thing figuring I could read it and get it on its way.

Little did I know.

Oh boy, was this book right up my alley. By page 25 I knew I was in for one of those days. Everything was going to come second. Lunch? It could wait. Walk the dogs? They don't really need it. Let the workers in? OK, I did that... at 3pm. On any other day I would have been livid, but since I was neck deep in Hater, I barely noticed. In fact I barely noticed when the workers left and my teaching hours were approaching. I was almost late for work, not that it mattered, I was going to find a way to continue reading at work, anyway. Nothing, but nothing was going to stand in the way of me and the last page of this book, which i reached by 10pm, following my usual Monday teaching schedule.

What, by god, could this book be about that would send a grown man diving for sofas and scuttling into corners in order to read a couple more pages? Essentially, Hater follows the classic storyline of a burgeoning zombie apocalypse. Unassuming man with crappy life starts to vaguely notice strange occurances happening all around him, most of which involve gorily inventive deaths of random strangers. Soon, these arbitrary attacks are happening with more frequency and they begin to close themselves in around the central character. People seem to be transforming from mild-mannered citizens into blood-thirsty killers at a rate far too rapid for authorities to handle. The situation declines at an exponential rate. The attacks are all over the news, while the news continues to broadcast, and what was, at first, a breaking news story has transformed itself into total societal collapse. Awesome!

But it's not zombies.

This is where Hater takes the twist it desperately needed to take. Had this been yet another book about the zombie hordes, it would have taken a miracle for it to follow through. As much as I like the zombie genre, its scope is limited and there are only so many directions you can go with mindless, fleash-eating drones. Max Brooks did a stellar job of re-inventing the genre a few years back with World War Z but David Moody was taking us zombie freaks on a ride in an entirely new, and more intelligent direction.

Zombies, by nature, are interesting insofar as they take the world by surprise and in large numbers. But once the collapse of the establisment is complete and the zombies cease to be a surprise to those who remain living, it is hard to maintain story momentum. Ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. Trying to write a serial comic about a post-apocalyptic world over-run by zombies can get difficult and writers are forced to rely heavily on human relationships under stress, since deconstructing the zombie mind would be an exercise in hilarious futility.

The genre has been in need of a major overhaul for years and David Moody has taken the zombie theme in an interesting new direction that enables him to transcend the authoratarian style and write within the post-apocalyptic world with a lot more freedom than traditional zombie writers. He will be able to move from one side to the other with ease and expand on the ideas and theories he has brought to life in Hater.

I can't really say much more than that without ruining the book and the overall storyline going into book two. It is, after all, the first in a trilogy and going ahead and spoiling the first reveal would be a literary crime. Rest assured that this long-time zombie fan and sci-fi freak spent every page of this book riveted. Moody maintains the suspense right up to the last sentence, reveals enough to leave the reader satisfied but leaves enough questions unanswered to ensure I read the next book. Naturally, that's the aim of writing the first novel in a trilogy, but it's surprising how may authors are incapable of pulling that off.

Must make a mental note to add Dog Blood, the second book in the trilogy to my Amazon wish-list. If it is even half what Hater was, I will be losing another day in the coming months.

Dead Famous

Dead Famous

By Ben Elton

According to Ben Elton, England is going down the tubes and it's all reality television's fault. Once a proud nation that resolutely stood up to the Nazis during the Battle of Britain and stared imminent annihilation in the face with cool determination and a stiff upper lip. British men were made of moxy and steel and their women, well, they were made of moxy and steel, too! Winston Churchill defiantly proclaimed that:

"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Immortal words from one of the great modern statesmen. Britain would stand proud for another thousand years thanks to Churchill's (and Britain's) resolve.

Just a half-century later and we have an entirely different generation with entirely different values and an entirely different vocabulary. It's probably worth lamenting, if it weren't so damned funny. In Dead Famous, Ben Elton's highly improbable, post-post-modern novel about a preposterous reality television program, characters have insanely amped up names such as Woggle or Gazzer or Moon, probably don't know where to buy Winston Churchill brand cigarettes if you asked them and speak like this:

"Woggle, he da man! Da top man. Respect! But the whole show is totally wicked, so fair play to all the posse in the house. Kelly's my girl, Oojah, Oojah!"

There's a lot in that quote I really don't understand. I can't imagine that anyone, anywhere actually talks like this, but if there is, I never want to meet him or her. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer eloquence.

Now, I should have known I wasn't going to like a book that featured characters with names like Woggle or Gazzer or Moon, especially one that centered on a third-rate reality game show called House Arrest. I despise reality TV with a passion and have never understood people's fascination with such thinly-veiled voyeurism. But, I persevered and, at the end of the day, I actually enjoyed this book for what it was, and that what it's all fookin' about, inn't? Respect!

So what gives?

I suppose the reason enjoyed this book is that it was such an over-the-top parody of reality television and didn't attempt to squeeze some sort of moral or philosophical point out of what is, ultimately, an extremely hollow genre of entertainment. I mean, anyone who stops to consider the social and cultural implications of reality television is simply going to think themselves into a considerable headache and be nowhere closer to a solution than they were an hour previous. It's lowest-common-denominator television and anyone who argues otherwise is delusional or simply dim.

Had this book taken itself even a little seriously, it would have fallen flat on its face. Instead Elton carefully portrays each of the "housemates" as the cardboard cut-outs they are: The boozer, the struggling actor looking for a break, the quiet doctor who is trying to blend into the surroundings. the lesbian, the manipulative and money-grubbing producer, the bitter evictee, and the smelly hippie anarchist that endears himself to the public. Elton's characters have about as much depth as a puddle. There are no subtle personalities and no extended networks of friends or family (only those relevant to the plot). Each character is no more than the sum of their parts as they appear on television. Single-serving characters as Edward Norton might say.

When a murder is introduced to the plot (something that would obviously send a REAL reality show to a screeching, lawsuit-addled halt), the already absurd cast of characters is thrust into improbability hyperdrive that includes attempted suicide, and a kick-boxing Irish lass. I mean, what's not to like? Had they added a fifty-foot giant iguana that terrorized London I wouldn't have batted an eyelash.

Add the impossible circumstances in which the murder takes place (in an enclosed environment littered with cameras that document the happenings in literally every corner of the house) and give each and every "housemate" a motive for killing the victim (some very flimsy motives, I might add) and you've got yourself an enjoyable, if ultimately pointless read. The wonderfully pyrrhic conclusion is worth the price of admission alone. It was so unnecessarily convoluted that I had to read it twice and it still made my head hurt, but who cares? It's reality television literature which means it's like the junk food of fiction. I'll feel bad for a few hours after finishing the book and forget the entire thing by next week (unless of course I descend into a downward spiral of junk food books and choke on my own vomit).

For the one or two people who read this blog on a regular basis, you might ask: "Why give Dead Famous a pass and Henry's Sisters such a colossal fail?"

Well, my dear reader, it was all about delivery. While Cathy Lamb wrote with all the sincerity in her entire body and failed, failed, failed, you get the impression throughout Dead Famous that Ben Elton is simply taking the piss out of our modern culture (or lack of culture). As is mentioned before if at any point in this book had Elton waxed intellectual on the state of modern pop culture and the decline of Western civilization you would be reading a blog post akin to Henry's Sisters. As it stands, he didn't and the book is every bit as vacant as you would expect. It's the difference between Zoolander and It's Pat: The Movie. One is so stupid it becomes smart parody, the other is simply stupid. There is a fine line and one that is not easily explained. I would suspect that the people who cannot tell the difference between parody and stupid are also fans of reality television.

Anyway, I've wasted enough time on this book. Let me give a closing example to prove my point about stupid-turned-funny. At a crucial point in the book when the remaining non-murdered "housemates" are sitting around chatting about God, one of the characters spews this thought-provoking sound bite of wisdom:

"I'm quite interested in Eastern religions. For instance, I reckon that Dalai Lama is a fookin' ace bloke, because with him it's all about peace and serenity, ain't it? And at the end of the day, fair play to him because I really really respect that."

Take away the annoying Britishisms and you have a Hansel quote, right there. That's comedy gold, right there, Jerry!

Wicked!