A Page of Quickies

Here follows a series of concise reviews of books that I have read. They did not warrant my normal treatment because either they were books I did not quite manage to fathom, or were what one might classify as 'holiday' reads - what I would call fast food novels.

First up is Conclave by Robert Harris.

Even a seasoned reviewer in The Guardian was moved to write "I am about to use a word I have never knowingly used in any review of any book ever. During my 25-odd years of writing about books I have done my best to avoid cliches, slipshod summaries, oracular pronouncements and indeed anything else that might appear emblazoned on a book jacket. Nonetheless, there is only one possible word to describe Robert Harris’s new novel, and it is this: unputdownable."

In a nutshell, the pope is dead and cardinals are gathering to elect his successor in this portrait of power, corruption and deceit.  There you have it.  With a fabulous denouement.  I recommended this to my discerning doctor friend, in French translation.  

                                                                   ↝↝↝↝↝

When I was browsing bookshelves in a charity shop I spotted 

After Me Comes The Flood by Sarah Perry.

I recognised it as the debut novel of Sarah Perry.  She of The Essex Serpent fame.  It is a short novel and looked accessible 200+ pages, pages not densely printed.  For me the novel was a conundrum which I never got into because I could not quite make sense of the story, such as it is.  There is one section which takes place on a beach, near a saltmarsh which involves a lost child.  Here Perry is clearly at home: saltmarshes, tides which ebb and flow, once again an upturned rowing boat.  This environment in the natural world is clearly familiar to her.  (Perry grew up in Chelmsford, Essex, alongside the Thames Funnel)  When she is in that milieu where the land meets the sea she is utterly at home in her writing.  Later she describes a powerful rainstorm which brings about the climax of the novel, again her powers of description of natural phenomena are on show.  

The novel garnered some favourable comment from the likes of Sophie Hannah, Sarah Waters (whose writing I rate highly).  Adjectives like unsettling, intriguing, eerie, dream-like, creeping, gripping are used by reviewers.  I think the novel might warrant a second reading with attention to the calibre of the writing and less focus on a search for a story.  But not just now!

My Purple Scented Novel by Ian McEwan

Amazon says:  
A jewel of a book: a brand new short story from the author of Atonement. My Purple Scented Novel follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed, published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday.

"You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade…You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline… I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.

This is short story published as a stand-alone booklet.  It's a quick read and deals with plagiarism.  Everything you ever wanted to know to pull it off!

It was first published in The NewYorker Magazine in March 2016.  You can read a full transcript here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/28/my-purple-scented-novel-fiction-by-ian-mcewan

And the transcript of an interview with McEwan about the story in the same periodical here:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-ian-mcewan-2016-03-28