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

The Daydreamer and The Daylight Gate

The Daydreamer by Ian McEwan

I try and stay 'au courant' with the writing of my favourite authors.  And Ian McEwan is up there in my top 5.  Periodically I google to make sure there are no titles that have slipped me by.  I was intrigued to find this book listed and investigated further.  Well, I really loved this book.  You could view it as an adult book for children, or a children's book for adults.  The boundary between the two genres is completely fuzzy.  One story, The Cat, stands out as the celestrial gem around which the other astral bodies of this small constellation of stories cluster...... 

Peter Fortune is a quiet boy with a busy head. His teachers think he's dull, staring off into space all day, but he has nothing worse than an excessive imagination. He is a daydreamer, a quiet ten year old who can't help himself from dropping out of reality and into the amazing world of his vivid imagination.  His world seems limitless - think of infinity and double it. In his dreams he fends off wolves, wrestles with dolls and exposes burglars with the aid of that perfect wonderland haven - a real mousehole. He can magically become a cat, or a baby; he even spends a few traumatic moments as a grown-up. Trying on all these lives for size is both flighty and educational: when he infiltrates the black fur of the family cat - after a brilliant unzipping scene in which the pair swap bodies - he enjoys a day of gorgeous feline laziness and fierce nocturnal vitality. As a baby he drowns in banana and plastic toys and comes to see the narrowness of the huge little boy (himself) who is being so unfriendly.  These imaginary journeys leave Peter bruised but wiser.

In the end the book ends well, with an uneasy waking-up scene that both embraces and celebrates an authentic adult impulse. In a parody of Kafka's Metamorphosis, Peter wakes after a night of troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a 21-year-old. This happens during the holiday in Cornwall where the children - the Beach Gang - have been having adventures while their parents plan the barbecue. The Kafka echoes reinforce the sense of alienation: it is as if all adult life were a treacherous setback. And, at first, Peter is bemused. But then, in a lovely turnaround, he finds himself trembling in a railway tunnel with a 19-year-old girl called Gwendoline ('Morning sunlight, broken by the leaves of the apple trees, bobbed about her shoulders and in her hair'). Unimaginable pleasures rush upon him, and he hits on a big truth: that even adults have secret dreams. Suddenly the grown-up world, which all along has seemed a diminished version of the fantastic imaginary places, doesn't seem so bad after all.

Acknowledgements to The Independent review of The Daydreamer.

The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson
"This novella began as a Dare.
Hammer Horror used to be a part camp part scary British Horror Movie outfit that made Draculas and Frankensteins’s and classics like My Wife The Zombie.
Hammer dropped down dead for years and was assumed buried, but was lately revived by entrepreneur Simon Oakes who made Woman in Black and Let The Right One In.
They decided to start a publishing deal with Random House. Simon said to me: You lived near Pendle Hill didn’t you? Write me a novella about the Lancashire Witches.’
Nuts, I thought. And then I did."  Jeanette Winterson.

Good Friday 1612. Pendle Hill.
A mysterious gathering of thirteen people is interrupted by a local magistrate. Is it a witches’ Sabbat?
In Lancaster Castle two notorious witches await trial and certain death, while the beautiful and wealthy Alice Nutter rides to their defence.
Elsewhere a starved child lurks. And a Jesuit priest and former Gunpowder plotter makes his way from France to a place he believes will offer him sanctuary.
But will it? And how safe can anyone be in Witch Country?

Brilliant writing, spare yet descriptive and so full of atmosphere and chill.  Loved it.