Category: Reviews

Darkness held a vague terror for these people

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things-fall-apartThings Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe

I first read this Nigerian classic for my A-level English. It was probably the first book I had read by an African author. Back then I didn’t have much to compare it to but I’m grateful to Linda, my English teacher, for introducing me to it.

I remembered this as the story of the arrival of the white man in Africa, and the effect of Western religion and imposed rule, but that’s really only the end of the book and not the main thrust at all. This is primarily the tragedy of Okonkwo, a great and celebrated hunter and wrestler, whose obsessive need to not fail like his father sows the seeds of his destruction.

Okonkwo’s father was lazy and died in debt. So Okonkwo makes a point of opposing everything his father enjoyed, such as music and arts, and becoming great at the things his father did not do well: farming, fighting, war. He has three wives and several children and is an elder in his village, Umuofia. Everything is on track to him earning all the great titles of his tribe. But his determination to succeed is his own downfall.

“When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often. He had a slight stammer and whenever he was angry and could not get his words out quickly enough, he would use his fists.”

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A wild and unstoppable song of triumph

zennor in darknessZennor in Darkness
by Helen Dunmore

I picked this off the TBR because while on holiday in Cornwall I’d spotted a signpost to Zennor and remembered I had this book. Plus I like Helen Dunmore’s writing. This was actually her debut novel, which also intrigued me.

Zennor is a small village near St Ives. It’s 1917 and the Great War is at its height. Clare Coyne has always felt like an outsider in her home town, having been raised by her outsider father after her mother’s death. She has cousins, aunts and uncles just a few streets away, and counts some of her best friends among them, but she is still very much separate from them.

“Better not think about it. It’s like a bruise, and the day is magnificent. You could sing aloud, glorying in it. You could understand that the Magnificat was once a wild and unstoppable song of triumph, not a delicate lacework of church voices. Little complicated fields glitter…On her right the sea shines like shield.”

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The early summer sky was the colour of cat vomit

ugliesUglies
by Scott Westerfeld

This is the first part of a sci-fi young-adult trilogy – not my usual fare, but having sampled and quite liked The Hunger Games earlier this year, when my book club picked this title I figured it couldn’t hurt. It got a similar reaction from me: quick easy read, engaging, characters I cared about the fates of, but occasionally clunky and/or predictable.

The Uglies of the title are all the people born in the City from the age of 10 (I think) to 15, between being a Littlie (i.e. a child) and a Pretty. On their 16th birthday, everyone has the operation – a kind of extreme plastic surgery with the aim of making everyone look, while not identical, an identical degree of beautiful. (As the operation is so extreme I was a little bothered at the lack of detail about how it could possibly be done in a single day and with zero recovery time, but I guess I can let that go.) New Pretties live a life of drinking and partying, indulging in clothes and other superficial delights for a few years until they choose whether they want to return to studying.

“The early summer sky was the colour of cat vomit. Of course, Tally thought, you’d have to feed your cat only salmon-flavoured cat food for a while, to get the pinks right. The scudding clouds did look a bit fishy, rippled into scales by a high-altitude wind. As the light faded, deep blue gaps of night peered through like an upside-down ocean, bottomless and cold”

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The white sea-mists of early summer turn the hill to fantasy

TheKingsGeneralThe King’s General
by Daphne du Maurier

I picked this book to read while on holiday in Fowey. Du Maurier wrote this historical novel while living at Menabilly, and loosely based it on the house’s occupants during the English Civil War. In her author’s note she calls it a “blend of fact and fiction” – as far as I can tell, the names of people and outcomes of battles are correct, their personalities and feelings about each other are presumably invented.

It’s a slightly uneven novel, weaving a questionable romance into what is otherwise a fascinating mix of characters and events. The narrator is Honor, who structures her story around the Grenviles, a pair of siblings who came into her life when she was a young child. Richard Grenvile is dashing but pretty much a bastard. For the first part of the book he doesn’t even come across as the roguish antihero he later becomes, he’s just nasty and it’s a little hard to see how Honor could, as she does, fall in love with him. Then again, she’s very young and nice girls falling for bad boys is a classic trope for a reason, right?

Richard’s sister Gartred Grenvile is similarly beautiful and treats people like dirt. She is an interesting baddie, always acting out of self-interest rather than any inherent evil. This puts her at times in an uneven truce with Honor, while at others they are clear enemies.

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The numbness didn’t happen all at once

monsters-daughterThe Monster’s Daughter
by Michelle Pretorius

My knowledge of the history of South Africa is a little sketchy, or at least it was before reading this book. But it’s so much more than a historical novel. This is genre-bending fare, combining crime, science fiction, social and political history – and it works.

The book opens with the discovery of a murder in a small town called Unie in 2010. The head of the police investigation, Sergeant Johannes Mathebe, is a straight player and he’s not getting on well with his recently appointed assistant Constable Alet Berg. She drinks, she swears and she resents being in this small town – a punishment for having an affair with one of the senior officers during her training.

The next chapter opens in 1901, in the midst of the Boer War. British troops are clearing out the Dutch farms, taking the people they find – mostly women and children – to concentration camps. A young woman called Anna is picked out from the Bloemfontein camp for something else, something worse, something that will echo through the next 109 years in its awfulness.

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You see nothing but what you’re looking for

summer bookThe Summer Book
by Tove Jansson
translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal

This Scandinavian modern classic isn’t well known over here. I forget which book blogger alerted me to its existence but whoever you are, thank you! It is a thoroughly lovely book.

It’s the story of young Sophia (her age is never given exactly) and her grandmother over the course of a few summers spent at their family home on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. The events are mostly small, such as Sophia’s first camping experience or going “gathering”. (Note: I’m not sure if the quotes I’ve chosen convey this, but I did find the writing style took some getting used to. It feels a little simplistic, as if a child is being addressed. But once used to it I enjoyed this style.)

“Gathering is peculiar, because you see nothing but what you’re looking for. If you’re picking raspberries, you see only what’s red, and if you’re looking for bones you see only the white. No matter where you go, the only thing you see is bones…Sophia and Grandmother carried everything they found to the magic forest. They would usually go at sundown. They decorated the ground under the trees with bone arabesques like ideographs, and when they finished their patterns they would sit for a while and talk.”

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Languages are different for a reason

alif the unseenAlif the Unseen
by G Willow Wilson

I was eager to read more G Willow Wilson after discovering her writing in the Ms Marvel comics. This is a lovely easy read that deals with some pretty deep complex issues but manages to never feel like an “issues” novel. Which is a clever balancing act. It’s probably the fantasy elements that help keep it light and fun. Mostly.

The story follows Alif, a young man in an unnamed Arab Emirate who works as a “grey hat” – a skilled hacker who helps paying customers to remain hidden online. He keeps a vigilant watch for the state’s top internet security expert “the Hand” but is widely acknowledged to be the best and therefore safest from arrest. He is also conducting a secret affair with Intisar – secret because although they are both Muslim, their social classes are very different and neither set of parents would approve. But Alif is a romantic and assumes they will somehow find a way.

When the book opens, Alif (which is his screen name, not his given name) has not heard from Intisar (ditto) for two weeks and is trying not to worry about the possible reasons. Then the Hand manages to break most of the way through his computer’s encryption and he is suddenly at real risk of arrest. Friends help him out but there comes a point when he needs more than friendship – he needs another kind of aid entirely.

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The past was hard, cruel and especially inimical to women

angela carter fairy talesAngela Carter’s Book of Fairy Tales

I started reading this book on 31 December and finished it this week. It’s not the smallest book, but 450 pages doesn’t usually take me several months. Especially not when it comes from one of the 20th century’s greatest authors, Angela Carter. So what gives?

Well, two things. One: this is a collection of more than 100 short stories, and I do like to spread out short stories by reading one or two per sitting, even when the shortest are less than a page long. Two: perhaps more pertinently, these stories were collected and curated by Carter, not written or even edited by her. So while they share her taste in the weird and feminist, they do not exhibit her writing skill – more noticeably so in some cases than others.

Carter spent many years collecting these stories for what was originally two separate books published by Virago. She sought translations into English, ideally transcriptions from oral storytellers, from all over the world and the result is truly the most international collection I have ever read. For example, the final chapter’s stories are labelled as: Yiddish; Norwegian; Africa: Bondes; USA; Africa: Hausa; Chinese; Surinamese.

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Recent reads: DNF

As I mentioned in my June monthly round-up, I have abandoned a few recent reads despite getting the best part of halfway through them. I don’t actually think they’re bad books, so I thought it still worth writing a few words about them.

cairoCairo: My City, Our Revolution
by Ahdaf Soueif

I loved Soueif’s first novel The Map of Love and I enjoy her journalism on the Guardian, so I was excited to read this, her account of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. She combines adrenaline-filled, first-hand, written-at-the-time stories of Cairo mid-revolution with calmer, more reflective chapters written eight-plus months later. It’s a passionate, well-written book but I had to put it down because it was making me sad. The enthusiastic excitement of Soueif, her family and friends mid-revolution is suddenly brutally tempered by the reality of months later, where Egypt is in a fragile state still and statistics have been gathered about the number of revolutionaries who died. I will come back to this when I am emotionally ready for it.

Published 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing.

Source: Christmas present from one of my parents.

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Her compressed and coded thoughts exploded between them

in certain circlesIn Certain Circles
by Elizabeth Harrower

I first heard about Elizabeth Harrower in a New Yorker article a couple of years ago that celebrated the republication of the elderly Australian author’s works. It included the intriguing detail that this would be the first opportunity to read her fifth novel, In Certain Circles, because back in 1971 the author decided at the last moment not to proceed with its publication.

There is no obvious clue to what Harrower could have disliked about her work, as this is a tremendously well written novel. Perhaps she didn’t like its negative tone, because this is not an uplifting read. It is deeply sad, but not due to big disastrous events. Its sadness is the type that comes from life’s disappointments, poor decisions that are only revealed to have been wrong several years later.

It doesn’t start out with an especially sad tone. When we meet main character Zoe Howard she is 17, fully aware of her beauty and privilege, living as she does at the opulent end of Sydney Harbour. Her older brother Russell was a POW during the war, forever changing his outlook on the world and the circles he wants to move in. He introduces her to his friends Anna and Stephen Quayle, siblings who were orphaned and left in the hands of a poor abusive uncle. Despite their very different circumstances, the four connect in a way that keeps their lives bound together far beyond Russell and Stephen’s shared university course.

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