As I Lay Dying

William Faulkner
Vintage 1996, Paperback, 256 pages, £7.99

While there is much to admire in the novel – the strong evocation of place, for example, and the ear for country vernacular – it’s the unusual narrative technique that makes the greatest impression. Faulkner makes the reader work hard; his characters do not provide helpful recaps of prior events or of their relationships with one another, which is exactly how real people think. The result is a story that emerges slowly, with questions often remaining unanswered for long periods and the reader forced to fill in the blanks with guesswork.

On the one hand, as I’ve said, this narratorial approach is more authentic. On the other, not having all the information you need to make sense of the story serves as a constant reminder that this is a novel. It constantly draws one’s attention back to the narrative device – or at least that’s the effect that it had on me. It distanced me from the characters, making me feel that I never really understood them. But, paradoxically, that is what it’s like in real life – we can’t ever truly know what it’s like inside somebody else’s head. Then again, isn’t the point of fiction to take us inside others, where we can’t ever go in reality? Faulkner’s technique reminds us that we’re reading fiction and in doing so offers a more realistic view of a character than a traditional first-person narrative would, which perhaps defeats the point of writing a novel in the first place. To me, it is both a more authentic and a more artificial narrative voice.

Of course, 80 years later, this technique no longer feels innovative. However, Faulkner carries it off so much better than most authors that its power is undiminished. It is the conviction with which he draws his characters and the strictness with which he controls his narratorial eye that allow him to succeed where lesser authors would fail.

The strictly subjective approach means that it’s often unclear whether things are really happening, and even when it’s clear what’s happened Faulkner often shows us two contrasting perspectives on events without offering a judgement about which we should believe. For example, is Anse’s determination to travel so far to bury his wife an act of devotion, an ill-advised piece of bloody-mindedness or simply selfishness? The answer is unclear until the very last page of the book.

The conflicting motives of the characters may not always be clear but their voices are – each character’s inner monologue is distinct and recognisable without being being caricature. It is clear, without anyone saying so, that Vardaman is a small boy, for example, and that Jewel is a doer, not a thinker.

There’s a sadness about the book that grows as it becomes clear that the family’s quest will not be worth price that they have paid along the way. It is the reverse of Homer’s quest in The Odyssey – from where the title is drawn – instead of returning to home and order, the Bundren’s are leaving home for a place of chaos and uncertainty. The family should have stayed at home, the reader, however, will benefit from having taken the journey.

Related posts:

1. Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis (James’s book 7, 2010)
2. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (Shane’s book 10, 2010)
3. Your Face Tomorrow. 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell by Javier Marías (James’s book 1, 2010)

Death of a Murderer

Rupert Thomson
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC 2008, Paperback, 256 pages, £7.99

Still, the tension with his wife has Billy pondering their relationship as his 12-hour shift unfolds and the body he is guarding leads him inevitably to wondering about the nature of evil. He begins to consider the misdeeds from his own past and the times he was tempted to do worse. Are some people simply evil or are we all the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, Brady’s psychiatrist and professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a “concatenation of circumstances”?

It’s not the most profound question, admittedly, but it’s one that Thomson has Billy approach honestly and thoughtfully, without trying to turn his character into a philosopher or an intellectual. Billy, as a policeman, has seen more of life’s ugliness than most of us ever will – and been involved in a little himself – and it is this insight that he brings to bear on the subject. When Hindley appears, perhaps as a ghost or perhaps in Billy’s imagination, Thomson draws her with the same kind of restraint. Her presence on the page is chilling but underplayed. Thomson is not setting out to chill, he knows that the subject will do much of that for him.

There is some consideration, too, for the demonisation of Hindley. Thomson pays little attention to Brady but shows some interest in how a figure such as Hindley becomes so large in the public mind. Mostly, though, he seems to be interested in fathers and daughters. I think I’m right in saying that every woman in the novel has a father who is to some extent dysfunctional. In a sense, Billy’s 12-hour shift is an examination of his fitness as a father for his own daughter. It’s perhaps coincidental but worth noting that Thomson has a daughter too.

When Billy’s shift ends so does the novel. There is no big twist and no enormous dramatic peak, just a release of tension. Sometimes it’s only when you breathe out that you realise you’ve been holding your breath. That’s how the end of this book feels.

Thomson’s writing is spare, restrained and, barring the odd slip, pitched perfectly throughout. This is a thoughtful little book and one that’s well worth your time.

Related posts:

1. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (Shane’s book 10, 2010)
2. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (Shane’s book 3, 2010)

White Noise (Picador Books)

Don DeLillo
Picador 1986, Paperback, 326 pages, £7.99

To White Noise, then, which was DeLillo’s breakthrough novel and tells the story of a university professor who runs a course in Hitler studies and lives with his wife, their son and their children from assorted previous relationships. The professor, Jack, and his wife, Babette, are both strongly afraid of death and obsessed with the idea of which of them will die first.

The book has three parts. The first sets up Jack’s place in the university and his relationship with Babette. In the second, the family has to flee an ‘airborne toxic event’, caused by a chemical spill from a train. The final section has Jack investigating the mysterious medical trial in which Babette has been taking part.

DeLillo plays with the ideas of simulation and authenticity, examines notions of celebrity and looks at the increasing dominance of technology and mass media. It’s delivered with DeLillo’s wonderfully-crafted, perceptive prose. This piece from the Panopticist gives a sense of how much work goes into DeLillo’s writing. It also highlights one of the book’s problems, however. Towards the end of his article Andrew Hearst mentions the book’s “first laugh-out-loud line”:

“Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage.”

Humour is a very subjective thing but the joke just doesn’t seem funny to me and nor does much else in the book. That’s a flaw in a comic novel, clearly.

Many of the themes – academia and institutions, waste, media and consumerism, for example – are echoed in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which is one of my favourite novels. DeLillo was Wallace’s mentor so it’s likely that White Noise was an influence on Infinite Jest. I think, however, that White Noise suffers from my having read IJ first because Wallace handles those themes so much better. Wallace is not only actually laugh-out-loud funny but also deals in real emotions.

DeLillo pays lip service to real emotions but seems unable to bring them to life on the page. His central characters here are supposedly terrified of death but DeLillo can’t make this into more than an intellectual exercise. When confronted with the idea of death his characters toy with the idea of terror but I seldom believed for a moment that real feelings were at issue.

And then there’s the dialogue. I know I’ve already mentioned it but I can’t over-emphasise the realism-smashing, nails-down-a-blackboard cringe-inducing effect his dialogue has on me. For a writer whose characters talk so much, DeLillo has such a tin ear for how real people talk. The problem is most obvious with the children in White Noise: even the teenagers here sound like middle-aged men who think too much. Every character does. It’s like listening to a monologue by a schizophrenic: he thinks there are lots of people there but in fact there’s only him.

When people aren’t talking there’s a lot of marvellous writing going on and some thought-provoking ideas, such as The Most-Photographed Barn In America, which DeLillo feeds into his meditations on reality and simulation.

The weaknesses, for me, mark DeLillo out as a good, rather than great writer and White Noise is a good, but not great, book. Of course, even saying that puts me on the wrong side of most literary opinion of the last 30 years. It’s definitely worth judging for yourself.

Related posts:

1. Point Omega by Don DeLillo (James’s book 9, 2010)
2. One Day by David Nicholls (Kat’s book 5, 2010
3. Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse (Shane’s book 31, 2009)

Take a Chance on Me

Jill Mansell
Headline Review 2010, Paperback, 416 pages, £7.99

Take A Chance On Me is really enjoyable for about three chapters and then dips down into autopilot. Mansell makes an engaging male character (saddled with the hideous lothario name of Johnny LaVenture), makes him warm and witty and generally nice, and then makes him hop around until our heroine deigns to fall into his arms. I know this is always going to happen and it’s not rocket science, but it helps if the story along the way makes its fantasy vaguely realistic, and this may as well be actual Mamma Mia! instead, in which case God help us all.

Cleo is a 29-year-old school drop-out who still lives in the village where she was brought up. The school bullies called her Misa (“Me Sir!”) for being swotty and so she reacted by ploughing all her exams and eventually becoming a limo driver. One of these school bullies is the insanely hot LaVenture, who decides to spend the entire book grinning at Cleo, even though she’s a) failed to get over the fact he bullied her at school (a bit) b) never bothered to get those exams and c) spends the ENTIRE BOOK either being sulky or dragging him into her failed love life. The couple are given no build-up, there’s no momentum to their relationship beyond it suddenly being the last chapter and oh bollocks they really need to hurry up and get it on.

Anyway, there is another subplot involving a ghastly 18-year-old girl, a ridiculous husband and Cleo’s sister, and a further one involving Cleo’s radio star best friend and Cleo’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, but given that the only really good part of this book is the beginning, I’d say ditch it and read Perfect Timing instead which is on fire all the way through. This is just a bit meh.

Related posts:

1. Wise Children by Angela Carter (Kat’s book 1, 2010)
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (James’s book 21, 2009)
3. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem (Shane’s book 10, 2010)

Shop Girl Diaries (Salt Modern Lives)

Emily Benet
Salt Publishing 2009, Paperback, 256 pages, £9.99

Hurray for Twitter: I found out about this book, set in a shop close to where I live, through the @Se1 account. Even though it’s square-shaped. For some reason this really grinds my gears. I like books to be book-shaped, otherwise I feel like I’m reading an accordion or a copy of Meg and Mog. Also, I worry about dropping it in the bath.

Anyway, this is a lovely book, and one that proves slight isn’t a bad thing. Emily Benet works in her mother’s chandelier shop on Tower Bridge Road and chronicles their regulars, successful and dodgy haggles and her own love affair.

The half-Spanish Benet (you’ll wish you were half-Spanish too when you read about her trips to Spain and South American travels) writes beautifully, even though there’s not always lots to write about. This started life as a blog (which Benet still writes, to award-winning effect). It will be really interesting to see what her first novel will be like, because she writes with an irresistible combination of delicacy and sureness of touch that for some reason makes me think of the Cat in the story, and how it would write if it told the story of that time it looked at the King.

The story is slight – not a lot happens beyond Emily and her mum continually trying to close down their shop and failing thanks to their keen customers, and an occasional tangle in Emily’s relationship – but as a portrayal of life in London and a side to London you don’t necessarily get to see it has real charm. It works best of all as an introduction to a writer who is clearly going to do very exciting things with words and, hopefully book-shaped, books.

Related posts:

1. Youth by J.M. Coetzee (James’s book 25, 2009)
2. Pink Pony, Catherine Carey (Kat’s book 3, 2010)
3. The Boy With The Top Knot by Sathnam Sanghera (Kat’s book 2, 2010)

Among the Mad

Jacqueline Winspear
John Murray 2010, Paperback, 352 pages, £7.99

Anyway, it turns out the Kent-born Winspear is no such thing: she writes today, but now lives in California, where I hope she will soon develop soupy-eyes and a matronly attitude. And while Maisie Dodds is indeed set in the 1930s, it’s not fluffy and there’s very little 30s slang.

Maisie Dodds is a working class gel made good. Having been trained into investigations by her mentor Dr Maurice Blanche, she has taken over his practise and helps the police with their enquiries as well as her individual clients. Maisie is a rather uninspiring creation to follow, an unemotional woman with almost zen-like levels of self-control (at one point a man commits suicide via bomb in front of her and she barely raises an eyebrow). But Winspear puts in enough detail about Maisie’s past life to make this work as a stand-alone read as well as part of a series. The sheen soon comes off this zen once we find out that Maisie worked as nurse with shell-shocked soldiers during the First World War, slowly lost her lover to shell shock and suffered a breakdown herself a year before.

This works very well as an inbetween to Pat Barker’s infinitely harsher Regeneration trilogy and to Singled Out, Virginia Nicholson’s excellent biography of that generation of women destined to remain spinsters or build careers after their men were killed, or left mentally gone after the war. Among the Mad is a great idea for a mystery: fed up with the lack of attention given to former soldiers now that memories are healing over, someone is committing murder using the horrific chemicals and methods inflicted on them during the War.

While Winspear’s prose is more workmanlike than I’d ideally like and her characters don’t really leap off the page despite their interesting backstories, her story is efficient. Its focus on the forgotten soldiers of WW1 acts as a welcome counterpoint to the easy, lazy days the 1930s are usually painted as. There is also a bittersweet sideplot in which the wife of Maisie’s male assistant is sent to an asylum after the death of her young daughter, and suffers from what passed for mental health treatment. Luckily, a contact of Maisie’s is a senior physician at a more progressive hospital, and the wife is allowed to move there, but it’s a neat reminder that not everything was Mitfordian sunshine in the 1930s.

It’s a quick read, but one that will leave you thinking afterwards, not least because, in passing, Winspear drops some very interesting names I’d never heard of before: female policemen and a doctor who ran a women-only patrol of doctors in France during the war. Maddeningly, I left this book at my mum’s for her to read, so a bit of Googling is in order before I can remember their names. Not sure I’ll actively seek out Maisie Dodds books again – the storyline is good but there’s not much zing – but those names, definitely.

Related posts:

1. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (Shane’s book 30, 2009)

One Day

David Nicholls
Hodder Paperbacks 2010, Paperback, 448 pages, £7.99

And people will, and do, love One Day. Partly because that cheery orange and white cover is gracing every 3 for 2 stand in the United Kingdom and a 3 for 2 offer is basically a Decree From God, and partly because, in Emma, Nicholls has written one of the best characters of the last few years.

Nicholls’s lovely gimmick is that each chapter rejoins two old friends on the anniversary of their meeting at university and gives us snapshots of what they’re doing. Dexter, a good-looking bloke blessed with charm and luck, is an absolute pillock, and is to be tolerated only because his zingy, wry friend Emma is just the most wonderfully-written girl. I started reading it before bed and found it so easy to read and fun that I was pushing myself to read faster so that I could cheat sleep until I’d finished it.

Emma’s letters to Dexter, her thoughts and the unrelenting crapness of her early-20s life in London fizz off the page. It’s entrancingly good writing – I want to find Nicholls, grab him by the lapels and scream “HOW did you come up with her, you utter, utter bastard?” – to the extent that it makes the later parts of the book feel all the more like an enormous cheat. Still, I cheated sleep successfully and read the entire book in one go. And, like everyone says, I laughed – out loud, properly – and cried – sobs, mind you, not just tears, great hulking sobs. He’s a horribly manipulative writer, this David Nicholls, but he judges his manipulation beautifully, even if it doesn’t always give you the results you want for Emma and Dexter.

This really is a perfect holiday book, but make sure to take advantage of those 3 for 2 offers because you’ll zoom through this on your flight there and then rue not bringing that monstrous doorstop, Wolf Hall.

Related posts:

1. The Boy With The Top Knot by Sathnam Sanghera (Kat’s book 2, 2010)
2. The Beautiful Game? by David Conn (James’s book 20, 2009)
3. White Noise by Don DeLillo (Shane’s book 11, 2010)

Dead in the Family

Charlaine Harris
Gollancz 2010, Hardcover, 320 pages, £14.99

Having spawned the just as enjoyable hit TV series, True Blood, the TV cast adorn the book’s cover despite, in this universe, one of them being dead and another not existing.

But no matter. What will matter is fans of the series launching into this one which would be a colossal mistake given this is number 10: Sookie’s story is miles ahead from the TV series, featuring fairies, werepanthers and others supernatural beasties that haven’t so much as shown up on the box yet.
So while fans of the show should head for the earlier novels (not to worry, they’re so crack-like you’ll rocket through them in a week), Dead in The Family is absolute bliss for established Sookie nuts.

This is a relief more than anything. Harris is a brilliant writer, but ten books is ten books and I was gnawing my nails with worry that, by now, she might have been hit by burnout and expectation (Janet Evanovich’s wonderful Stephanie Plum novels stopped being wonderful around book 10 and yet – grimace – they keep coming).

After the torture, war and general upset of last year’s Dead and Gone – like Evanovich, Harris has cursed herself with a ‘themed’ series title – the pace is much slower, with Harris allowing readers the luxury of a gentle stroll through Sookie’s world without that much torment getting in the way. The ravages of previous events have certainly taken their toll on our lovely heroine, but it’s her new habit of swearing that jars the most. Sookie using “fucking” as an adjective is rather sad: such a sunny character, but one who’s seen too much.

The more sedate pace means that this is the one Stackhouse book where you aren’t immediately lunging for your house keys the moment you finish reading in order to go out and buy the next one. It’s a more thoughtful book than we’ve read before and serves as a welcome lull in what’s been a frenzied series of action, rather complicated supernatural histories and multiple deaths.

For the hooked reader, it’s also rather lucky there’s no cliffhanger because there’s a whole year to wait until number 11 comes out, making that something to look forward to rather than resent not having it immediately.

Related posts:

1. Shop Girl Diaries by Emily Benet (Kat’s book 7, 2010)
2. The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore (James’s book 30, 2009)
3. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (Shane’s book 25, 2009)

The Great Gatsby (Penguin Popular Classics)

F Scott Fitzgerald
Penguin Classics 2007, Paperback, 192 pages, £2.00

As I’m sure that Ready or Not, Mr Croc doesn’t count towards the 26 I decided to rattle through a couple of books I’ve had in the pile for some time, the first being the Great Gatsby. I’ve been rattling considerably more slowly than I had expected.

One of the reasons for slow rattling has been that I disliked the Great Gatsby so much. Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have I loathed the central characters of a book as much as this.

I don’t think it’s really the fault of the narrative. It’s lively and wittily written but there’s something about books featuring little cliques of rich people living out their privileged lives and being terribly worried about things that are only important within their own circle that makes my boil with rage. I want to throw the book across the room. This, I realise, is entirely my own problem.

The plot concerns a young man making friends with people from outside his own class, people who appear to be carefree, rich and socially exotic. It’s about a love affair with the idea of privilege and effortless wealth, ultimately brought down by the grubby origins of fortunes, selfishness, obsessive romance and passionate death. It’s a big story told admirably well from a small, tight perspective and depends entirely on the humanity and failings of its characters. As the end neared I was rooting for the gunman.

Before I’d finished the book, it was suggested to me as I was ranting about how much I hated them all that maybe I was meant to – that Fitzgerald might have been satirising the empty lives of the American upper classes – but I don’t think he really was. At least not consciously. Accounts of his life tell of high society parties and hob-nobbing in New York state, all the sort of thing that fills the pages of his novel.

Considering the ultimately bleak tone of the novel, though, I can’t help inferring that Fitzgerald hated himself, his peers, his family and the world he lived in, and I can’t work out whether this is an extraordinary flash of insight on my part of just a symptom of the big class-hatred chip on my shoulder. I suspect it’s the latter.

So: a fine book, but I just couldn’t enjoy it. Too bad for me.

Related posts:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (James’s book 21, 2009)
2. Dubliners by James Joyce (James’s book 6, 2010)
3. Trent’s Last Case by E C Bentley (Shane’s book 8, 2010)

Well, Thelwell’s certainly full of these caricatures, and the frankly terrifying Saddle Club series from the 90s scared any competitive edge out of my horse-mad tween self, but pony books from the 40s through to the 60s are wonderful, which was why it was so nice to find a couple hanging around my parents’ house.

As a child, Pink Pony was one of my favourites, up there with St Clare’s and Malory Towers as a totem of a childhood that was far removed from my own suburban London life. Half-French October (brilliant name) spies a beautiful strawberry roan foal in a field one day. Her parents have promised her a horse of her own and she talks them into letting her own it and break her in herself. Bearing, in mind she’s barely 12 when this pony appears, what 12-year-old do you know who could a) commit do that sort of challenge and b) what parents now would let her? Let alone having a pony in the first place, bloody expensive things that they are.

Coming back to this book after 15 years, what struck me was how unflappable the prose is. There’s no breathless gosh or cripesing. Children are treated as children, but they’re given responsibilities. October’s pony – Southern Cross – has a brother who is bought by a rival rider and whose initially gentle temperament is completely ruined by harsh treatment. Despite having a rocking name and being bilingual, October and her half-Italian best friend are treated as outcasts by the school’s popular set until a nasty accident wins them sympathy.

I bought this copy of Pink Pony from the wonderful Jane Badger shop, a one-man online operation specialising in selling old books at extremely good prices. I’ve picked up a number of old Armada favourites here and it’s well worth a look. Pony books are a great read, calming and nostalgic without ever letting fantasy overtake the realities of money and they make responsibility something to aspire to.

Related posts:

1. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Sara’s book 1, 2010)
2. History: A Novel by Elsa Morante (James’s book 2, 2010)
3. Shop Girl Diaries by Emily Benet (Kat’s book 7, 2010)