Category Archive: Fiction
The Blue Flower
(Penelope Fitzgerald) I thought that Penelope Fitzgerald’s novalised (geddit?) part-biography of the poet and philosopher Novalis would help me straighten out the Penelopes Lively and Fitzgerald and stop me from confusing Novalis and Nerval. Of course Lively and Fitzgerald are virtually indistinguishable, both being women who have won the Booker Prize. By an incredible coincidence, each is English and has one “e” in her surname. It is also easy to see how I have confused the two male writers – after all, Gerard de Nerval was the pseudonym of Gerard Labrunie who took his lobster Thibault for walks about bits of France while Novalis was the…
Continue Reading →Dominion
'Non preoccuparti, we left Winston in the car.' (Chamberlain, Mussolini, Lord Halifax & Count Ciano at Rome Opera, Jan. 1939)
(C J Sansom) Smog, smog smog. There is a lot of smog in this novel, which serves to hide the holes in this rather unlikely plot. But it’s an ok read if you believe in “holiday” books. World War I is known only as The Great War because there was no World War II. Halifax succeeded Chamberlain. England surrendered and Churchill is now an underground resistance leader. How differently things actually turned out! It’s all very well until the erstwhile surprisingly amiable and hands-off Nazis turn a bit nasty and start to disappear people. Importantly however, Germany’s most effective means of domination is to control Europe with finance rather than jackboots. How…
Continue Reading →The Luminaries
Never judge a book by an interesting cover.
(Eleanor Catton) The 2013 Man Booker Prize judges must have super-sensitive metal detectors, for they found gold in this boring, pointlessly complicated novel. After working through the dross, slag and tailings for only a short time I lost interest in magic bullets, missing crates, who had seen whom when and where and I had no idea anymore why it mattered. Snore. I still might have given this sometimes evocative book an additional star…but then I got to the appalling, awful courtroom scenes. Grrr.
Continue Reading →The Buried Giant
(by Kazuo Ishiguro) A plodding tale about memory, being nice to one another and Sir Gawain. Fittingly, the dragon who may or may not be the villain of the piece is thin, bloodless and apparently asleep. The plot meanders episodically. The characters Axl and Beatrice are loving and real in their way, but the other characters are indistinguishable. There is no soul, no gravitas, no depth. Is the giant Arthur? or the dog of war? or does it have some eschatological meaning? Either way it stayed well buried. If one wishes to read about King Arthur’s nephew, try Sir Thomas Malory (picture of the Grail on…
Continue Reading →The Heart is a lonely Hunter
(Carson McCullers) Not as completely ghastly as a Flannery O’Connor but up there in the southern Gothic oh-my-gawd stakes. The ultimately empty, Christ-like Singer and the yearning tomboy Mick are stock characters perhaps but they live and breathe in this story of poverty, hopelessness and waste. Ian Hunter’s “Cambreau” from Strange Cargo and Conrad Veidt’s “Stranger” from The Passing of the Third Floor Back meet Scout Finch in a boarding house, a café and a ditch.
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