I have one of those tacky, International Bestseller, trade paperback, short-listed for the Man Booker copies of A Fraction of the Whole, and its coverI have one of those tacky, International Bestseller, trade paperback, short-listed for the Man Booker copies of A Fraction of the Whole, and its cover is totally f*cking misleading.
Not only is it covered with bullet holes (hardly a shot is fired in the entire book), but the quotes about how funny this book is dominate the obligatory accolades section:
"Laugh-out-loud-funny." ~~Entertainment Weekly "Riotously funny ... deserves a place next to A Confederacy of Dunces." ~~Wall Street Journal "A nutty tour de force." ~~Publishers Weekly "Willfully misanthropic and very funny." ~~Los Angeles Times "Madcap." ~~New York Observer "Inspired, sorta stoned, tender and very funny." ~~Chicago Sun-Times "Devastatingly funny outlook on everything human." ~~Seattle Times
And on it goes for a couple more pages of review excerpts, nearly every one declaring that A Fraction of the Whole is comic gold.
So I can be forgiven, I think, for going into this book thinking it was going to be funny -- even hilarious. It wasn't. It was deadly serious, and I loved every second of the experience. The book touched me at a fundamental level. Yes, I smiled now and then about something the Deans said or did, but I laughed only one time in 561 pages. This was a tragedy, an unlikely one and a beautiful one, but a tragedy all the same. It was not a comedy. Not for me.
But then it is hard to laugh at a man like Martin Dean when you are Martin Dean. And I am. Internally I am his mirror image, so maybe there is comedy in A Fraction of the Whole and I just missed it because it was too close to home. If that's so, though, I think I can be forgiven again.
Regardless, I don't think that Steve Toltz was consciously writing a comedy. I think he was writing a serious drama, attempting to say serious things, and that the humor that is found in the pages, whatever it is, is incidental.
I have to go and see what beat him to the Booker now, and I'm going to have to read it right away. It better be bloody good (I have a feeling it was Hilary Mantel). ...more
Aravind Adiga claims Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the forebear of his Booker Prize Winning novel The White Tiger. I wish I could speak to that relAravind Adiga claims Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man as the forebear of his Booker Prize Winning novel The White Tiger. I wish I could speak to that relationship (I really must get around to reading Ellison), but there was another relationship I found that was important to me: Balram Halwai (aka "The White Tiger," aka "Munna," aka "Country-Mouse," aka Ashok Sharma) and Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov.
Balram is a sort of anti-Raskolnikov.
Their story is much the same but there is one key difference: Balram doesn't let "foolish" guilt overwhelm him. The fiery Indian man has a strength of spirit that the paranoid Russian lacks, and it makes him likable in spite of his actions.
But then, Raskolnikov's weakness always made me cringe. His act of murder was nasty, yes, but it wasn't without justification, and once he committed the murder I wanted him to live up to the ideals he used to justify his act. He failed himself and paid the price, and he disappointed me in the bargain.
Balram doesn't fall prey to the same weakness (although it is interesting to note that the novel is epistolary, unfolding in a series of letters over seven nights, so perhaps there is an underlying weakness that still catches him out beyond the confines of the novel), and he uses the murder and the money he steals to better his life and finally feel like "a man" in a world where caste enslaves more than half of its starving population.
If Raskolnikov's crimes were somewhat justified, Balram's are much more so, but they also have greater consequences. Balram's crimes bleed into areas that Raskolnikov's don't. Balram's attack with the jagged neck of a Johnny Walker Black bottle doesn't just kill his "master," it effectively kills his entire family.
The wonder of Adiga's book, however, is that it leaves us, or at least it left me, entirely okay with Balram's actions.
The man did what he had to do. He did what the rich do everyday. And he became one of them. He rose up. He made it.
And that's the American Dream isn't it? The American dream in Bangalor. Praise be to free enterprise....more
2004. Another Booker Prize Winner I liked but couldn't love. Another year when the winner was less impressive than those it beat. And now it is 2011 a2004. Another Booker Prize Winner I liked but couldn't love. Another year when the winner was less impressive than those it beat. And now it is 2011 and Alan Hollinghurst's new book The Stranger's Child has been long listed for this year's prize and already he's the bookmakers' pick to win.
He probably will, and maybe this time he'll deserve it.
That's not fair of me, though. It's not like The Line of Beauty was a bad book. I enjoyed it well enough. The characters were engaging (I especially liked Catherine). Hollinghurst was fairly honest about his debt to Evelyn Waugh and others. It dealt with one of my favourite themes -- homosexuality -- in an honest and welcoming manner with minimum nostalgia. And I am always a sucker for the eighties, having been a teen myself at the time.
But even with all of those positives, The Line of Beauty never transcended the better than average for me. I had trouble caring about the Feddens (except Catherine), and I didn't give a damn about their troubles. I spent much of the time wishing I was rereading Brideshead Revisited -- another book, oddly enough, that I find only better than average (there is much better Waugh to read) -- and wondering who the BBC was going to cast when they got around to making the book (which they did, as I knew they would). But worst of all, I never really liked Nick. I found him pathetic, to be honest, and even though I felt that Hollinghurst purposely presented him as unsympathetic, I couldn't make myself go along for the ride.
Oh well, even if I couldn't love it, I did like it. I recommend it to anyone who likes quality writing, gender studies, books about the English upper crust, or a literary quality beach read.
Still, I hope Hollinghurst's new one is better. His reputation has, so far, eclipsed his output -- at least for me....more
This review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal inThis review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal in which it was written. I have transcribed it verbatim from all those years ago (although square brackets may indicate some additional information for the sake of readability or some sort of commentary from now). This is one of my lost reviews.
"...the sky took on a look of readiness for the dark, that depthless clarity which is no colour and the womb of all colours."
For me this is one of the most powerful descriptions of twilight I've ever read. Yet Unsworth's book is much more than rich language. In the characters of Matthew Paris and Erasmus Kemp, he captures the opposing forces of my own soul.
The slave trading vessels of our history are a perfect stage for this battle to play out, and the paradise of Kenku-Stardust is a perfect stage for its culmination.
Slavery is my home country's greatest personal tragedy, and the more I know of it the more I take on the shame of it myself. I wish there was something I could do to wipe away that shame and repay those who suffered. There's blood on our hands even though we didn't sail on those ships....more
I ate dinner at an historical park once, and when I think of that meal I always remember being pleased with the place setting and the table linens. ThI ate dinner at an historical park once, and when I think of that meal I always remember being pleased with the place setting and the table linens. The table cloth was crisp and white, the silverware was highly polished, but I can't remember the feel of the fabric or the design of the forks and spoons and knife. What little I remember accumulates into nice. It was all nice.
Nice but mostly forgettable.
And that's all I'm left with when I think of Brookner's Booker Prize winning Hotel Du Lac. It was nice. I remember a likable woman moving amongst mostly likable folk in Geneva. I enjoyed the niceness of the experience, and then it was forgotten.
Hotel Du Lac was nice. I'll never read it again, though, because nice doesn't keep me coming back.
Something that has won a prestigious literary award should leave us with more than a feeling of niceness. But that's all Hotel Du Lac has to offer.
Nice. Just nice. Only nice.
But then maybe it wasn't nice at all. Maybe it was the antithesis of nice. But if it was, and if there was an element of the not nice that I missed...well, Brookner didn't do a very good job then did she? I shouldn't be remembering nice all these years later, should I? I think not. Now isn't that nice?...more
Second try to get started, second time I've stopped. It just isn't grabbing me at the moment. Second try to get started, second time I've stopped. It just isn't grabbing me at the moment. ...more
This review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal inThis review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal in which it was written. I have transcribed it verbatim from all those years ago (although square brackets may indicate some additional information for the sake of readability or some sort of commentary from now). This is one of my lost reviews.
Rarely is a book's theme so fittingly captured in a title than it is with Pat Barker's Regeneration. As Dr. William Rivers heals war victims like Burns, Anderson and Billy Prior, its meaning is obvious, but it is also duplicitous -- connecting also to the manipulation of Seigfriend Sassoon and Rivers' own regeneration of spirit.
Barker fills Regeneration with some haunting, unforgettable images: Burns falling face first into the German [soldier]'s exploded stomach; Anderson's collapse at the sight of a nicked cheek (this from having once been a [WWI] surgeon); Prior's eyeball and the question, "what do I do with this gobstopper?"; and the most terrible of all, Dr. Yealland's torutre of Callan -- a cure by negative -- Nazi-like -- reinforcement.
By setting WWI on the home front, the gravity of its horror is more fully driven into my mind than any film I've ever seen has done. It's a time I'm quite happy to have missed -- at least with this life of mine....more
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