Bookworm News: June 2011

Summer reading

It's that time of year again - the time when broadsheet newspapers publish long and delightful lists of recommended books to read over the summer, which we can go through and circle with a blotchy biro to our hearts' content. Doesn't have quite the same effect on a screen, does it? Nevertheless, Online Degrees Hub's list of the 20 Best Books About Suburbia is certainly worth a peek (as perhaps evidenced by the fact that my Amazon wishlist now runs to 231 items for books alone. Nuts.). Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler's autobiography, Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?, could also be one to check out for music fans. For next summer, Carole King's autobiography is due out in the first half of 2012.

Awards news

I often feel that in Britain particularly we don't always pay enough attention to foreign literature - perhaps because our own country's output is so good. That's why prizes like the Caine Prize for African Writing are important for allowing us to be exposed to texts from across the world. Sometimes known as the African Booker, the finalists for this year's £10,000 prize for a short story are as follows:

• Hitting Budapest (NoViolet Bulawayo)
• Butterfly Dreams (Beatrice Lamwaka)
• What Molly Knew (Tim Keegan)
• In The Spirit of McPhineas Lata (Lauri Kubuitsile)
• The Mistress' Dog (David Medalie)

I for one look forward to the announcement of the winner on July 11th :) In a similar vein, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize went to a writer from Peru - Santiago Roncagliolo - for his novel, Red April.

Another £10,000 prize up for grabs each year is the Ondaatje Prize, which was this year awarded to Edmund de Waal for his book The Hare With Amber Eyes. Honoured under the prize criterion of 'evoking the spirit of a place', it was judged the winner by such luminaries as Ali Smith, Don Paterson and Sarah Waters.

John Le Carré

The famous abstainer from literary awards, John Le Carré, did, however, accept the Goethe Medal this year. In sadder news, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, which honours the best work by a writer under 35, has been suspended for 2011 due to lack of funding. Past winners have included Angela Carter and VS Naipaul.

Share the magic of Disney's Winnie The Pooh with your little one - for free

Until September 30th, Fairy Non Bio and Fabric Softener have partnered with Winnie The Pooh to offer three free audiobooks for all the family to enjoy. Purchase any marked pack of Fairy, send off the receipt, choose your book, and have it sent to you. You can find out more here. 

Movies of Books

Coming out this year is the film version of Lionel Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin - surely a challenging and ambitious project, as anyone who has read the book will know. How to balance its heart and its gruesomeness? How to get across the confusion the reader feels at the book's beginning due to the clever and somewhat bewildering way in which Shriver sets us up? In any case, the film-makers have tried, casting Ezra Miller in the title role and with Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly as support. Out on October 21st this year in the UK.

Furthermore, having recently seen the frankly crappy version of The Great Gatsby on the big screen - the one starring Mia Farrow - I wait with interest for the newest version, starring...LEONARDO DI CAPRIO as Gatsby. Think I might just die of happiness (even though, somewhat confusingly, it's coming out in 3D). Out in June 2012.

For sale...

An extremely rare, unfinished manuscript by Jane Austen will be going on sale at Sotheby's on July 14. Entitled "The Watsons", it is believed to have been written around 1804, and is even more significant due to the fact that no other original Austen manuscripts survive. It is today believed to sell for anything up to nearly half a million dollars...get your wallet out, then...

And speaking of ancient texts...

A dictionary detailing the minutiae of the 'dead' language of Akkadian has finally been completed after ninety years' work.  Started in 1921 at the University of Chicago, many researchers dedicated their entire working lives to the project, and still did not live to see its completion. But it is indeed now complete: the 21-volume Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is now available as a window into this world, through every conceivable type of text from recipe to prescription. More can be read about the project here - and, with the full dictionary retailing at around $150, your interest need not stop there; for a work of this magnitude, 150 big ones is surprisingly cheap. 

A 500-year-old book also went on sale in Utah for $35,000, making the Assyrian Dictionary's price tag seem like small change in comparison. The partial copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a history book originally published in Germany in the fifteenth century, is now open to offers; I'll be interested to see if it makes its asking price.

Tweet-tastic

Done with stalking Stephen Fry and having precisely no followers? For your entertainment, AccreditedOnlineColleges.com has compiled a list of 50 Impressive Literary Figures You Should Follow On Twitter. So if you've ever wanted to find out what the Fight Club author eats for breakfast or hang onto Neil Gaiman's every word - now you can. (Or, of course, follow me at @biancasbookblog ...don't know why I'm not on that list :p ).

And considering the increasingly digital future of literature, it's probably worth knowing about Google's deal with the British Library to digitize books, which will allow readers to search a quarter of a million texts that were originally published between 1700 and 1870. The plan is also to digitize 40 million pages of newspapers dating back 350 years - bringing knowledge just that little bit closer to everyone's fingertips.

Fortune's Rocks (Anita Shreve)

--The blurb--
"In turn-of-the-century New England 15-year-old Olympia Biddeford is spending the summer with her parents at their seasonal house at Fortune's Rocks. She is swiftly despatched to Boston when it's discovered she has embarked on an affair with a friend of her father's, but Olympia is already pregnant."

--The review--

Teaching high school for the past three years has only consolidated my belief that there is no child of this age who is mentally/emotionally capable of adequate parenthood. Children of this age, even the very mature ones, are naturally still in a very difficult emotional stage and state; although I am sure many would try to make the best of teenage parenthood, they still have many things to sort out in their minds and hearts, and so many things to enjoy while young and childless that are difficult or impossible to do once you have a little person in tow.

Anita Shreve is the only person who has ever come close to changing my mind about this through the character of Olympia Biddeford. Whether this is because Olympia is not a realistic character, or whether this is because the author has shown the full maturity of certain young people, the impression we have as readers at least is that Shreve deftly combines the emotional and physical innocence of a flowering young lady with the emotional and intellectual maturity of someone really quite advanced. While there is a certain amount of idealism, though, the author does not keep us under any illusions: this is heading for trouble, and fast.

The antagonist, John Haskell, is guaranteed to polarise audiences: you will either understand him and empathise with him, and be on the side of his and Olympia's romance, or hate and revile him and side with his wife and children. But although the initial decisions of Olympia and John provide the book's kick-start, it is the decisions of others that prove the catalyst and make us want to keep reading, as their futures are repeatedly taken out of their hands. 

But there is more to Fortune's Rocks than mere romance and dalliance: the legal aspects of the novel are simultaneously well-researched and accessible, and this legacy is carried, albeit to a lesser degree, by the next generation of romantic novelists, including Jodi Picoult and Sophie Kinsella. But the difference between these novelists and Anita Shreve is not only to be found in the depth of research and character but also in the lack of vacuousness and the beauty of the prose provided by the author. This is not only romantic fiction - this is literary fiction of the highest order, and perhaps something that Shreve's inheritors have not been able to carry the torch for.

Although it takes a long time to reach the story's conclusion, we are not bored for a moment on the journey, and when we do get to the end, we are not only satisfied, but even a little disappointed to be leaving Olympia behind, having followed her for five important years of her life and seen her develop and grow while still remaining the same person. And so it is to readers' delight to find that Fortune's Rocks is only the first in a quartet set at the same beach house (with the following three being, in order, Sea Glass, The Pilot's Wife, and Body Surfing) - and when you have this reaction to knowing that in fact, there is more to come from this dream-like setting, that can only be a good sign.

Other works by Anita Shreve

Past The Island, Drifting (1975)

Eden Close (1989)

Strange Fits of Passion (1991)

Where Or When (1993)

Resistance (1995)

The Weight Of Water (1997)

The Pilot's Wife (1998)

The Last Time They Met (2001)

Sea Glass (2002)

All He Ever Wanted (2003)

Light On Snow (2004)

A Wedding In December (2005)

Body Surfing (2007)

Testimony (2008)

A Change in Altitude (2009)
Rescue (2010)

Everything You Know (Zoe Heller)

--The blurb--

"Willy Muller has survived imprisonment for murdering his wife, years of hate mail from the public, and, most recently, the suicide of his daughter, Sadie. While recuperating from a heart attack, he finds himself drawn into the lonely world of his late daughter's diaries."

--The review--

Perhaps best known for her successful thriller Notes On A Scandal, which was turned into a bestselling film starring Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench, it is therefore arguably unsurprising that the author should have kept us all on our toes throughout her publishing career, with Everything You Know, her first novel, being no exception. The humour of Willy's compatriots balance out well the grisliness of Willy's own background and family; we read on not quite knowing how, or if, equilibrium will be reached.

The slightly engaging and yet slightly pathetic consonant protagonist, Willy Muller, keeps us hanging on by not letting us know until the very end whether he has been accused and subsequently imprisoned rightfully or wrongfully, and yet in spite of this suspense, when we are told the truth, we are not surprised - this being perhaps a testament to the skills of Ms Heller in building up character. Simultaneously, though, we are coached to believe that Muller is not necessarily a reliable narrator, and that therefore his confession may also be untrue. His relationships with his two daughters and their children have encompassed the whole spectrum of bad to nonexistent; why should his relationship with his readers be any more reliable?

Heller paints with scary precision and possible degrees of offensiveness a picture of Britain's lower classes, and, with equal accuracy, the own discomfort and prejudices felt (again, rightly or wrongly) by those seeing them from 'the other side'. Everything You Know, as with other books that I have read recently, seems to have as its principal message the idea that even if we do not follow in the exact same vein as our parents, they have the potential to make or break us more than any other influence. In the framework of this idea, then, it is thus natural that following on from Willy Muller's own shipwrecked life, his daughters' lives would be disadvantaged in their own ways (Sophie, by falling into a lifestyle controlled by drugs; Sadie, by becoming depressed and eventually committing suicide). However, Sadie's feelings that led to her suicide are not fully shed light on even by her diaries, which highlights the problem of how much is told about a single life (and brings us back round again to the problem of Willy's reliability as a narrator). The title of the book seeming to me to be too contrived, something about how much is revealed about someone, and in what way(s), may have been a better fit.

Strangely, while the novel is engrossing throughout, I suspect that this is mainly because we wish to find out the truth of the matter of Willy's imprisonment. Once this has been revealed, the book becomes forgettable, in spite of its ending of hope and empowerment. Ultimately the ideas that Heller presents are not new or original, even if the way in which they are presented is different: she may as well have prefaced the book with Philip Larkin's This Be The Verse ("They fuck you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do...") and been done with it.

Other works by Zoe Heller

Notes On A Scandal (2003)

The Believers (2008)

Let The Great World Spin (Colum McCann)

--The blurb--

"In the dawning light of the late summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. . . . It is August, 1974, and a tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter-mile in the sky. In the streets below, ordinary lives become extraordinary. Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among prostitutes in the Bronx. A group of mothers, gathered in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn the sons who died in Vietnam, discovers how much divides them even in their grief. Further uptown, Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenaged daughter, determined not only to take care of her 'babies' but to prove her own worth."

--The review--

At first sight, Colum McCann's latest offering, entitled Let The Great World Spin, has a very different and arguably less appealing face than the only other novel of his that I have read, Dancer (2003). Six years after Dancer's publication, would Let The Great World Spin prove equally enjoyable? Initially it would appear not, with the first parts of the book consisting of little more than a catalogue of substance abuse that were of little or no interest, similarly to Jon McGregor's Even The Dogs (a book which I have tried and failed to finish of late). Also like Even The Dogs, it is fabulous in its level of detail, and the fact of it being so graphic means that it is certainly not for the weak. But while Even The Dogs is a depressing and miserable collision almost of Eastenders and Skins on the page, Let The Great World Spin is more intriguing, changing scene totally from chaos to calmness and taking us from blood and screams to camomile and lace, making readers question just how all of this will fit together.

The novel's rhythmic qualities mean that although it is long we seem almost automatically carried along by the strength of the thing. The skill with which its characters are drawn is such that it would transfer successfully, in my mind, to the silver screen, and its potent mix of tragedy and gallows humour adds extra poignancy to the spliced moments that make up individual lives. Its illfatedness is almost Gatsbyish and makes it part of a great literary tradition, with its car crash being reminiscent of several famous others. We ultimately want to know what will happen to these poor souls; we know it will end badly and yet keep reading anyway.

Let The Great World Spin also very closely replicates the work of Don DeLillo and Marcel Proust in so uncannily mirroring how we think and how things prey on our minds. Although I have read Don DeLillo's Falling Man recently, and so be making links that are not really there, it seems too to be a portrait of a post-9/11 world, by showing how we are affected by such significant events, whether or not we realise it. The long chapters and stream-of-consciousness style are also features that are reminiscent of Proust, perhaps further cementing my earlier assertion that McCann is truly part of a long and successful literary heritage. He encourages us to see ourselves in art and art in ourselves, which has an inspiring effect in spite of the novel being so deeply suffused with tragedy. This is further compounded by the fact that the small children at the end of the novel are the only ones who have the chance to escape their doomed background, environment and parentage. We are given hope by them, but equally made to feel sorry for those in the story who were deprived of the same chance.

In spite of the non-chronological order of events, which does not always make the storyline easy to follow, Let The Great World Spin is nonetheless relevant and full of impact. It is not only about where we choose to direct meaning, but how and why, and this lends it an absurdist slant: we fill in our lives with meaning in the only ways that we know how, and this does not always involve colouring inside the lines. Although the novel can be disorienting due to the number of characters that it concerns, this is one reason why it merits multiple reads, and it is arguably a grand achievement that in spite of this sense of disorientation, the whole thing pulls together wonderfully, reflecting the world in which we live through a never clear-cut prism of broken dreams.

Other works by Colum McCann

Fishing the Sloe-Black River (1994)

Songdogs (1995)

This Side of Brightness (1998)

Everything in this Country Must (2000)

Dancer (2003)

Zoli (2006)

Our Street: East End Life In The Second World War (Gilda O'Neill)

--The blurb--

"Our Street is the perfect companion to Gilda O'Neill's bestselling My East End. This book focuses on the lives of Londoners in the East End during the Second World War. Showing the concerns, hopes and fears of these so-called 'ordinary people' Our Street illustrates these times by looking at the every day rituals which marked the patterns of daily life during WWII. It is an important book and also an affectionate record of an often fondly remembered, more communal, way of life that has all but disappeared."

--The review--

As a 1990s kid, it's understandable that I and some of my academic interests should be a product of the restrictions of the UK education system at this time. One of these interests stems from my study of history; in spite of many years of study, the Second World War is one of only a few periods that I know much about and which continues to hold my interest, as well as that of a significant proportion of the British public. Thanks to the ageing combattant and non-combattant survivors of the war, and the younger generation who have had the war's history thrust upon them, WWII-related books and products continue to thrive in today's market.

The aforementioned survivors naturally want to tell the stories of their experiences, and Gilda O'Neill is one of these people, having inhabited the East End of London during the war period. However, Our Street tells relatively little about her own experiences, consisting of a patchwork of testimonials from others, which are of readable lengths and captivate the reader immediately with tidbits of tales which make our jaws drop due to the complete improbability of their occurrence today. This awareness of incidents that are totally outside our span of experience as younger readers also triggers the sobering thought of how different the world will be when we are of pensionable age to the 1990s world we inhabited as children.

For the older generation, in spite of the horrifying experiences that some of the interviewees have gone through, a sense of nostalgia and feeling of the 'Dunkirk spirit' is reawakened, and this aspect of community and strength and familial ties is equally palpable to younger readers. O'Neill ties together the testimonies reasonably successfully, although at times it feels a little forced. The flavour of the East End is equally alive, distributed with vigour through the use of dialect and descriptions of the cityscape and housing estates, and readability is enhanced by the splitting of the book into themed chapters such as evacuation and food. This also enables a 'pick and mix' approach, as it is therefore unnecessary to read the book in chronological order.

To assume the dual role of author and editor, as Gilda O'Neill has done in this book, is surely no easy task, and while she arguably does not completely succeed, the result is still an accessible tome that appeals to those that were there just as much as to those who were not. Her passion for her own personal past and for the history of her past in general is clear, and incites the reader to seek out more of her books - fictional as well as non-fictional.

Other works by Gilda O'Neill

The Cockney Girl (1993)

Whitechapel Girl (1994)

Dream On (1998)

The Lights of London (1999)

The Bells of Bow (1999)

My East End: Memories of Life in Cockney London (2000)

Playing Around (2000)

Just Around The Corner (2001)

Getting There (2002)

The Sins of their Fathers (2003)

Make Us Traitors (2004)

Of Woman Born (2005)

Lost Voices: Memories of a Vanished Way of Life (2006)

The Good Old Days: Crime, Murder and Mayhem in Victorian London (2006)

East End Tales (2008)

Rough Justice (2008)

Secrets of the Heart (2008)

Across The Barricades (Joan Lingard)

--The blurb--

"Kevin is Catholic. Sadie is Protestant. In Belfast they are supposed to be enemies - so what chance do they have when they fall in love?"

--The review--

In spite of having studied history at school until I was 18, I know disarmingly little about the history of the world in which we live. Perhaps mercifully, however, Northern Ireland and the Troubles were among the units of study, and while of course several aspects of this tale are fictionalised, Joan Lingard unmasks some of the extremities suffered by people living there without pulling any punches. People were, it appears, quite literally prepared to die for their personal choices, and prepared to equally risk the deaths of other innocents.

Even though the basis of the story is fairly harrowing, Lingard introduces these issues gently to the teens and pre-teens at which this book is targeted, concentrating mainly on the human interest behind the love story while keeping history on the periphery. The plot is of course affected by political goings-on, but jargon is kept to the barest minimum, and focus is maintained on what has happened, rather than on why it has happened, making for a good introduction to this time in history (for the target age group, why these things occurred can come later). It is also helpful and moving with regard to showing how close our world has been to terrorism for so many years; even with the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it is important to remember the sad fact that terrorism did not start or end with September 11th.

The author has also taken care to write concisely, packing a compelling story with believable characters into a text of readable length. A short story that can be read in one or two hours, this novella is an easy read in terms of length, vocabulary, and the success with which the author sustains readers' interest in the plot. However, it is of course not an easy read given the gravity of the subjects that are raised, and while young readers will naturally have questions that need answering after and during reading, adult readers too may well feel compelled to go and learn more about the country's devastating history - it being crucial also to remember that Across The Barricades, having been written in 1972, precedes by quite some years the pivotal Good Friday Agreement and the decommissioning of the Provisional IRA.

Finding out that Across The Barricades is part of a series (of which this book is the second of a quintet) that continues to feature the protagonists, Kevin and Sadie, is heartening: we have engaged with these main characters and do not wish to leave them just yet, and perhaps with further books, we are able to see not only what becomes of them but also of Northern Ireland, as seen through the author's eyes.

Other works by Joan Lingard*

The Twelfth Day of July (1970)

Into Exile (1973)

A Proper Place (1975)

Hostages to Fortune (1976)

*All of these books comprise the remainder of the Kevin and Sadie quintet. A far more exhaustive list of Joan Lingard's books for children and adults is available on Wikipedia.

The Wind Singer (William Nicholson)

--The blurb--
"After Kestrel Hath rebels against the stifling rules of Amaranth society and is forced to flee, she, along with her twin brother and a tagalong classmate, follow an ancient map in quest of the legendary silver voice of the wind singer, in an attempt to heal Amaranth and its people.After Kestrel Hath rebels against the stifling rules of Amaranth society and is forced to flee, she, along with her twin brother and a tagalong classmate, follow an ancient map in quest of the legendary silver voice of the wind singer."

--The review--
Not being a regular reader of fantasy should not put off potential readers from reaching for this book; the narrative hook of a nation controlled by exams and tests and the engaging nature of the very human characters soon, in a funny sort of way, draws you into this fantasy world quicker than you can say "Lord of the Rings". It is the mixture of human and fantastical elements which, woven together with William Nicholson's clear dexterity, make this book so appealing to children and adults, and while it certainly does bear some similarities to the great fantasy precursors that have gone before it (such as Lord of the Rings, the works of Diana Wynne Jones, and, to some extent, the works of JK Rowling and Garth Nix), The Wind Singer is clearly all its own book.

Nicholson's skill in blending the chilling, the humorous, the touching and the suspenseful is to without doubt be commended. He is also to be praised for introducing the dystopian genre to children in a way that is fully accessible, with enough adventure and nightmare without being too terrifying. In addition, the storyline is concise and absorbing, leading to a label of being literally 'unputdownable' as readers hang on eagerly to see the story's denouement play out in all its eventually triumphant glory.

However, there is one criticism; for reasons that are not completely fathomable, the ending seems rather rushed. Did the author run out of steam? Was his deadline looming? Or was it just so clear in his mind about how the story would end that it all just came out in a rush naturally? Either way, the ending itself deserved more development, attention and care.

After following the adventures of the unique cast of goodies and baddies, though, it's easy to forgive the author this one transgression - particularly as it is already arguably quite long for the target age group. One could say that even more detail could have caused readers to give up and wander away - although given the book's action-packed nature, this is perhaps unlikely.

A rollicking tale that keeps up the pace, The Wind Singer is an expert portrayal of character and adventure that immediately draws readers towards not only the other works in the Wind of Fire trilogy, but to Nicholson's other works thereafter.

Other works by William Nicholson
Slaves of the Mastery (Wind of Fire Trilogy; 2001)
Firesong (Wind of Fire Trilogy; 2003)
The Society of Others (2004)
The Trial of True Love (2005)
Seeker (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2005)
Jango (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2006)
Noman (Noble Warriors Trilogy; 2007)
The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (2009)

An Odd Boy (Doc Togden)

--The blurb--

"Volume one of an odd boy is a memoir of an eccentric aficionado of Bach and Blues, poetry and painting. A portrait of the artist as a lad, set in the experimental cultural ferment of the late 1960s. It is a coming-of-age adventure, both surreal and innocent, humorous and poignant, depicting an era when the Arts set a generation’s imagination on fire. The author’s life is a rare roulette wheel of childhood wonder and tragic debacles; a debilitating stammer and a powerful singing voice; bad luck and fierce good fortune."

 --The review--

With its intriguing premise and a title that seems deliberately designed to provoke an "I'll be the judge of that" reaction from would-be readers of this autobiographical debut, it is perhaps not difficult to see why people might be inclined to pick up a copy of An Odd Boy, especially since it is available in the convenience of ebook format first and foremost, following the increasing trend of today's book market. 

However, it is perhaps more difficult to see how or why readers might justifiably continue reading, given how far the novel is littered with minor irritations. The disjointed and patronising preface could probably be ditched altogether, and its tone of pretension unfortunately sets the tone for the rest of the book, with the text continually interspersed with quotations from various famous personages. Even naive young potential university students are not advised to write their personal statement in this way - in most cases, readers just want to hear the author's own words. Irrelevant information is often given, content is at times unoriginal (I did wonder if he was just trying to bring out his own version of Jonathan Coe's Rotters' Club, and failing), and the author is inclined to tell rather than show, making characterisation at times rather one-dimensional.

The narrator also tries to portray himself as a victim, but since he is too pretentious to be taken seriously, sympathy is in short supply. While his assessment (and others' assessments) of himself as an "odd boy" may well be correct, I'm not sure that his eccentricities merit an entire book on the subject. It is narcissistic; the portrayal of malapropisms used by others is unsuccessful in terms of trying to amuse; and, furthermore, the author also seems to think name-dropping will make up for his own (and his book's own) shortcomings (it doesn't). But this is not the worst of it: the entirely unnecessary footnotes are full of patronising remarks, such as the consideration that readers may not know who Evelyn Waugh was, what various British slang words mean, what the BBC is, or what 78s are. It is not, in my view, an author's job to explain the vocabulary that they use - rather, it is the reader's job to grab a dictionary or encyclopaedia and find out for themselves.

Perhaps worse is the sheer amount of typographical, geographical, and other types of error that permeate this book. Punctuation and italics are often poorly used, spelling mistakes include misspelling the name of the band Dire Straits (which is more than a little ironic considering how much music is supposed to mean to the author) and the word "whet" in the phrase "whet whistles", and grammatical errors include such horrors as "had forbade". The geographical mistake mentioned is in fact crucial to the narrative being presented - given that Borehamwood, Berkhamsted and so on are in Hertfordshire, not Herefordshire as maintained by the author, perhaps this explains why his searches for Alice were in vain?

It is clear from this, and especially also from chapter four, that significant cuts to this book are required, which makes it extremely surprising that ISBN numbers are provided on the book's flyleaf for both paperback and hardback editions of the book, as well as for the ebook. None of this does anything to help the ailing reputation of e-publishing (which suggests that there is still a lot of work to be done on the industry as a whole before it can pose a genuine future alternative for readers the world over). 

In spite of all of the criticisms above, however, An Odd Boy is not a totally unenjoyable read. While the idyllic image with which we are presented in chapter one is on the schmaltzy side, it brings with it something slightly portentous: the union of the two people described surely cannot be as perfect as we are led to believe or presumably there would be no book, so the perfection described is perhaps intended to signal a future deficit thereof. It is amusing in places, especially when it comes to discussions on the topic of God and religion, the bond between the author and Mr Love is genuinely touching and meaningful, and the author's excitement at being introduced to the Blues is clearly palpable (and not only that, but infectious, making the reader want to start listening to this music just as obsessively).

The work of Doc Togden is certainly much more engaging when he is showing us a more relaxed or honest view of his personality, rather than when he is trying to project a superficial and pseudo-intellectual version. Even though the text becomes at times egotistical and over-venerated, the interspersions get worse (with terrible teenage poetry added), and he tries to dress up his objectification of women as being somehow noble (when in fact he's just being a normal red-blooded male), the novel is infinitely better once the author gets over the illusion of his own precocity, and it is an easy read which is increasingly engrossing as the characters become more developed.

An Odd Boy therefore certainly has potential, even if it is as times badly expressed by a man who has clearly been told all of his life that he is brilliant and intellectual, only to never realise that there are others in the world who are just as intelligent (and, indeed, even more intelligent) than he is. All in all a satisfying read which ultimately feels unfinished; an editor needs to take a red pen and some scissors to it, and quickly.

Sodom and Gomorrah (Marcel Proust)

--The blurb--

"In this fourth volume, Proust's novel takes up for the first time the theme of homosexual love and examines how destructive sexual jealousy can be for those who suffer it."

--The review--

In presenting us with yet more hundreds of pages of high society goings-on (or, perhaps more to the point, non-goings-on), Proust seems out to bore us. However, the situation becomes more interesting and poignant when St Loup and Swann reappear, and we agree more with Saint-Loup too, who seems to be suggesting that he is becoming bored with high society life, and by this stage in the epic French novel we readily acquiesce. These two characters are refreshing among the parade of faceless individuals and only slight movements of an amoebic conglomerate. 

As with other volumes of In Search Of Lost Time, though, this fourth instalments is, by turns, eerily prophetic, sublime, and thoughtful. The narrator continues also to give us academic and philosophical food for thought: we are forced to consider our own narcissism, for one thing. Do we not all, in some way, consider our own lives as a cast of a few special ones moving against a background of superficial and two-dimensional others? If this is the case then Proust has replicated our own situations very accurately, even if this in a setting that contemporary readers do not recognise. On a more academic level, the discussion of the etymology of place names is relevant to the theme of name versus place raised in earlier volumes, but was interesting to me as a topic that I had considered as a subject of my master's degree thesis, so this interest may therefore not be so piqued for others. The same applies to the discussion of sex versus gender which takes place later in this volume. More universally intriguing is perhaps the nature of dream and sleep; Proust asserts his curiosity that we do not count the pleasures experienced in sleep as part of our everyday life's catalogue of happy moments.

The author is consistent in his inconsistency in the provision of gleams of light. The prose is still often impenetrable and opaque, and it is difficult to tell how much of this can be traced back to the author himself and how much of it can be laid at the translator's door. While certain gems keep the reader going, and such passages are clearly successful, these are counteracted by the lack of success found in the author's use of malapropism. The narrator's persona also continues to be difficult to deal with: while he is becoming more assertive, he is still manipulative, irritating, wimpish, neurotic and possessive, with his separation anxiety serving as an omnipresent undercurrent. This is simultaneously annoying and interesting as it does in some ways provide narrative momentum: we wonder, as a result of his nature, what purpose his relationship with Albertine really serves, and it is a relief to the readers to know that some of the servants featured in the novel also find his neuroses ridiculous, and that not everyone in the novel is taking the narrator as seriously as he is taking himself. The Balbec hotellier is another voice of reason - even though the narrator assumes that he says "I can tell you have nothing better to do" out of jealousy at not having been invited, the reality is that he says what the rest of us are thinking.

The reader longs for the narrator to return to the pleasant, peaceful and beautiful seaside retreat of Balbec in the hope of escaping the high society circles in which he has been moving in Paris. This unbearable circle of people is unfortunately not entirely left behind in the French capital, but this is slightly compensated for by other characters appearing who are more interesting - even if they are equally unconvincing, caricaturish, and an embodiment of petty inside politics. The audacity and tactlessness expressed by some of these members of the gentry would be hilarious with the right delivery, and further comedy can be ferreted out from the Verdurins' fickleness.

It is difficult to link the title to the book's content, as its theme does not supply a consistent thread - apart from a few throwaway tidbits we are not given much. This is something to be grateful for in other ways, though - if the alternative were a full-on diatribe of the ilk found in Part 1, Chapter 1, then most readers would likely pass. Proust as a precursor to the Austenesque humour that is so known and loved in British society today provides light to contrast the narrator's indecisiveness; he really seems to want to romanticise the fact of him being a womaniser, and seems more in love with the idea of being in love than ever. We end the volume feeling that his continuing liaison with Albertine is going to be a very bad car crash to say the least, and wondering how the author will pick up the pieces.

Other works by Marcel Proust

Pleasures and Days (1896)

Swann's Way (volume 1; 1913)

Within A Budding Grove (volume 2; 1919)

The Lemoine Affair (1919)

The Guermantes Way (volume 3; 1920/21)

The Captive/The Fugitive (volumes 5/6; 1923/25)

Time Regained (volume 7; 1927)

Bookworm News: April 2011

Billy Joel

Memoir News

"The Book of Joel", the Billy Joel autobiography due to be published this summer, has allegedly been dropped by Harper Collins due to the musical icon's reluctance to discuss his substance abuse and failed marriages. Makes you wonder why he signed up for it then really.

In the meantime, I was also wondering if my favourite stand-up comedian, Bill Bailey, will ever do an autobiography. After all, given that other successful comedians such as Michael McIntyre, Peter Kay and Dawn French have already done so, it would just be rude not to :p

Banned Books

The author of a new book about Mahatma Gandhi has defended claims that he accused the book's subject of being racist or secretly bisexual. Joseph Lelyveld's "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India" has already been banned in Gandhi's home state and, according to the BBC, it is possible that bans in other areas may follow. This has arisen from early reviews which cited words from some of Gandhi's letters; the author claims that these words have been taken out of context and that the word 'bisexual' was not once used in his book.

Booker Batted Back

In a moment akin to Benjamin Zephaniah refusing the OBE he was offered in 2003, crime writer John le Carré has now rebuffed his International Man Booker Prize nomination, saying only that he does not compete for literary awards. The other writers on the shortlist are David Malouf of Australia; James Kelan and Philip Pullman of Britain; Wang Anyi and Su Tong of China; Juan Goytisolo of Spain; Amin Maalouf of Lebanon; Dacia Maraini of Italy; Rohinton Mistry of India and Canada; and Marilynne Robinson, Philip Roth and Anne Tyler of the United States.

In celebration of success, however...

Jeff Kinney, author of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series, is still marvelling over its success. The series has been made into two blockbuster films and has also been recently recommended by education mogul Chris Woodhead as essential reading for children. "For me, this has been really fun, beyond my wildest expectations. I feel like I have my normal life in Plainville, Mass., and then my ridiculous fantasy life where I'm up on a stage, talking to people like this. So, it's just been surreal and very, very fun," Kinney, who is also an executive producer of the junior high-set flicks, told UPI at a recent New York press conference. There were reportedly 42 million copies of the series in circulation in 2010.

Aussie author and illustrator Shaun Tan has also recently won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title was given to Michael Young's Managing A Dental Practice The Genghis Khan Way. The Ridenhour Prize (awarded to a book deemed to be of social significance) went to Deadly Spin, by Wendell Potter.

Innovation of the month

Byook is not only a new reading experience but it is also keeping up with the latest technology with its recent launch for iPhone. Using codes and rules defined by the film industry, these ebooks are not just any ebooks: they are entrenched with pictures, animations and sounds, and as you read the first Byook for iPhone, a classic Sherlock Holmes tale, you will see the rain fall and blood drip in the palm of your hand as sound effects resonate in your ears, taking imagination to a whole new level. Out now, the app costs $1.99, and allows your senses to lead you beyond words.