Booker Book 9 of 13: 7/10. This book started wonderfully with a tone of psychological menace that deserved the comparisons I’ve seen in blurbs to PatrBooker Book 9 of 13: 7/10. This book started wonderfully with a tone of psychological menace that deserved the comparisons I’ve seen in blurbs to Patricia Highsmith. That I guessed the twist from minute one is not really the book’s fault. I have family in the Netherlands and so I have my priors.
Unfortunately, the deliciously menacing and twisted character study melts away fairly quickly into a much more conventional story.
Nonetheless, I thought the writing was very strong, especially for a debut, and I was always eager to read on....more
Booker Book 8 of 13: 8/10. I love it when a book that is not something I would normally like at all ends up seducing me. Such is the case with OrbitalBooker Book 8 of 13: 8/10. I love it when a book that is not something I would normally like at all ends up seducing me. Such is the case with Orbital. This is not a novel, and it is barely fiction. The six astronauts on the space station have lightly sketched characters, although for some the sketching is so light that the morning after I have trouble linking backstory to character. The real main character - the only main character - is planet Earth, lovely damaged magisterial Earth, seen over and over again from lightly shifting angles as the Space Station completes its 16 orbits a day.
Harvey imagines vividly what it is like to see earth from this vantage point, and her prose is gorgeous. She touches on the mysteries of space and the vastness of time and space, and at the book's core, there's the tragedy of human destructiveness. The environmental disaster that is Earth is touched but not dwelled on, which somehow makes it all the more devastating.
Well, I usually don't like books that don't have characters or plot, that are episodic and repetitive, but Harvey does this so well, and gets so neatly at the heartbreak of the current moment with a gentle optimism that comes from taking the very long view. ...more
Booker Book 6 of 13: 9/10. A beautiful difficult book that bears reading and re-reading. Michaels makes you do the work to connect the fragmentary chaBooker Book 6 of 13: 9/10. A beautiful difficult book that bears reading and re-reading. Michaels makes you do the work to connect the fragmentary chapters which trace related - by blood or by friendship- people through the 20th century and beyond. The book touches on many big thenes: the border between life and death/love and memory, scientific discovery and the traumas of war, and how all these themes inform each other. I know I missed much of it - there are many historical breadcrumbs (Marie Curie makes an appearance but others are more subtle) to be followed- and I look forward to reading again and savoring all this. Michaels’ prose is gorgeous, spare and epigrammatic but piercing and evocative. I could give this book the Booker....more
Booker Book 7/13: 6 or 7 out of 10. I loved the first part of this book. Although it starts slowly, it picks up steam, becoming a surprising and engagBooker Book 7/13: 6 or 7 out of 10. I loved the first part of this book. Although it starts slowly, it picks up steam, becoming a surprising and engaging portrait of a strictly religious family (father and aunt), their rebellious daughter, our "hero", a gay man bonded to the girl and with one foot in and out of the religious community, an eccentric Romanian drunk, and the "normal" men both the gay man and the girl love. These interesting characters hold our attention, and develop in ways that surprise us. (Oh yes, there's a delightfully smarmy villainess as well).
The book loses steam, somewhat, in the 2nd half. The quest for the mysterious unhappy Romanian woman who lived in the local manor house in the 19th century and ties to the book's themes of astronomy and unrequited love never quite becomes a driving narrative force. It's always there, but the reveals are not very exciting and we don't get caught up in the thrill of the chase. At the end, her story is still very thin.
The struggles with faith that are central for many of the characters are not a theme that normally compels me, and Perry only intermittently made me care about them here. And the themes of astronomy and the way the characters' movements mirror those of stars and comets was admirably done, but didn't compensate for the feeling that the book was petering out rather than urging the reader to a conclusion....more
Booker Book 4 of 13: 6/10. A fast ably put together read, although the terrain of Irish rural petty criminality feels perhaps too familiar. I never feBooker Book 4 of 13: 6/10. A fast ably put together read, although the terrain of Irish rural petty criminality feels perhaps too familiar. I never felt a deeper there when reading this book - it felt like a lesser included episode in a Paul Murray novel. That said, the writing was skilled and there was a bit of pleasant narrative tension....more
Booker Book 5 of 13: 8/10. This was my first Orange and his talent hits you hard, putting the complexity and heartbreak of the Native experience in thBooker Book 5 of 13: 8/10. This was my first Orange and his talent hits you hard, putting the complexity and heartbreak of the Native experience in the spotlight and not giving any easy answers. I really wish I read there there first, although the book does stand on its own. I loved the first part of the novel - taking us back five generations in the Redfeather family - I wished that each of the historical chapters were three times as long and that we could have spent much more time with the family ancestors. The modern day sections, which take place in the aftermath of There There, are perhaps more familiar in their tales of addiction and recovery but Orange’s ability to give us a multitude of believable voices keeps it fresh. Oh well, will have to read the prequel now!...more
4.5 I just loved this book. A wonderful imagining of a United States whose native population was not exterminated but thrived into the 20th Century as4.5 I just loved this book. A wonderful imagining of a United States whose native population was not exterminated but thrived into the 20th Century as an independent culture, modernizing as all cultures do, but maintaining a political and cultural state in the middle of these United States (and elsewhere - but the book takes place where St. Louis otherwise would have been). A fully realized alternative history and a thoroughly satisfying hardboiled detective story. Great characters and fantastic scene setting. Spufford is just so creative - and so thorough - you get lost in this very compelling, and tantalizingly heartbreaking because it didn't happen, other world. I'd happily read a sequel, though I suspect Spufford will go on to something else. ...more
A very well written and grueling novel of the Nigerian Civil War. Perhaps my favorite part were the mystical interludes, including the time in the lanA very well written and grueling novel of the Nigerian Civil War. Perhaps my favorite part were the mystical interludes, including the time in the land of the dead. The rest of the time Kunle’s odyssey is made up of the deprivations and brutalities of a losing war, and his impotence to help the people he loves even as he becomes- almost against his will - a brave and decorated soldier. I can say I appreciated this novel without ever really enjoying it. For a far more emotionally involving, and dare I say more politically illuminating, novel about the same period I cannot recommend highly enough Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is one of the best books of the 21st century....more
I guess I’ll call this Booker Book 1/11 (read Strange Eventful History and James a bit far in the past to count): 9/10.
The book starts slow and the pI guess I’ll call this Booker Book 1/11 (read Strange Eventful History and James a bit far in the past to count): 9/10.
The book starts slow and the plot such as it is reveals itself in fits and starts. But the writing is gorgeous and what emerges is a quiet and heart wrenching portrait of a life lived in exile, of friendship and its comforts, but also of the loss when our friends grow and change.
All this against the backdrop of the tragedies and brief hopes of recent Libyan history.
Too long and everyone is so unlikeable. A lot of fun detail bringing different British milieus to life but boy does it go on. The name dropping - of bToo long and everyone is so unlikeable. A lot of fun detail bringing different British milieus to life but boy does it go on. The name dropping - of brands, of artists, of writers - never stops, and with the enormous cast of characters you may be forgiven for scratching your head and asking who? as you read on.
O’Hagan wants us to dislike many of these people. The corrupt plutocrats from Russia, their craven vile upper crust British helpmeets, and the petty criminals who keep the wheels turning. And fine, we do dislike them. But I think we are supposed to have more mixed feelings about our “hero” Campbell Flynn, a middle class striver prone to (contradictory and often nonsensical) oracular pronouncements about the current moment, who is portrayed as some kind of truth teller and shatterer of shibboleths but never says anything that wasn’t hackneyed when I was a student in the ye old 80s. And we are certainly supposed to admire Campbell’s young genius mixed race foil, Milo, who is here to (literally) dismantle the old guard and usher us into a brand new day. But Campbell’s middle aged flailings never impressed me, and Milo is impossibly smug and holier than thou, so neither provides any relief from the general panoply of unlikeableness.
O’Hagen’s women fare better - Campbell’s wife Elizabeth has no discernible traits, other than to be loving and long suffering, but she is certainly not unlikable, and his sister Moira, a feisty Scottish MP, is one of the book’s most down-to-earth characters and most engaging. But this is really a male book and we spend very little time in the company of the female characters. In that sense, it reminded me of the “masterpieces“ of the mid-20th century, which likewise dwell on the white male midlife crisis, and which really have never done much for me.
So, after all of that, why am I giving it three stars and not one or two? partly in recognition of the effort that went into creating this huge rambling book. Partly because the audiobook narrator hit it out of the park. And partly because I do enjoy books bring different social settings to life even if I longed for a tighter hand. ...more
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