Lazy Days (Loe) / Exile (Ejersbo) - mini reviews (translated fiction)

Reviewing has kind of spiralled away from me in the last few months, but there are a few books I have read during this time that I wanted to highlight as being particularly stand-out and worth mentioning:

Erlend Loe - Lazy Days (Goodreads)

My love for Erlend Loe's books - and my general impatience at waiting for English translations (*has not yet learnt Norwegian*) - is no secret here, and Lazy Days does nothing to dampen either love or impatience. This is a short book, and the language is often sparse, with one-page chapters in places. It is also characteristically funny, often in rather bleak, blackly comedic ways, and strangely optimistic, despite the fact that the book focuses on one man's faltering marriage, his strained relationship with his family, his hatred of holidaying in Germany (where the book takes place) and his obsession with Nigella Lawson. (Odd, to read this book at a time when Nigella and her ex-husband were all over the news, as protagonist Telemann muses on their marriage at length.) The Nigella obsession is where a lot of the humour comes from (although for me, the funniest part involves his wife's toothbrush and Telemann's seeming determination to be ever-so-slightly annoying at every turn). It is difficult to explain to appeal of Loe's books, but for me this was as joyful to read as his other novels, and it's good to see his books popping up in bookshops more and more in their great Head of Zeus covers.

Jakob Ejersbo - Exile (Goodreads)

Another translated piece of fiction, this time the Danish novel Eksil (Exile), by the late author Jakob Ejersbo, who died before he saw the publication of the Africa trilogy, of which Exile is the first installment. It follows the lives of European ex-pats and wealthy Africans living in Tanzania, privilege rubbing up against poverty, in a society where corruption and apathy are rife. The main focus is on schoolgirl Samantha, who is dealing with a father eyeballs-deep in shady business deals, a sister who wants to get married so she can escape their family, and a mother who has moved back to England. Stuck at boarding school, Samantha is bored, rebellious, and without responsibility, spending her time drinking, doing drugs, experimenting sexually, and trying to inject some excitement into her life. The sense of disaffection is reflected in the writing style, and the ending is both shocking, and delivered in a deliberately flat way, that sums up the overall feel of the book - a kind of bleak inevitability hanging over the events, which are often related in quite a detached way. The book deals with belonging, and not belonging, and the fear of falling between the two places - a place that Samantha is in danger of landing.

Review: One Step Too Far, Tina Seskis

One Step Too Far

Tina Seskis

Kirk Parolles; Kindle edition, 2013

Goodreads

An apparently happy marriage. A beautiful son. A lovely home. So what makes Emily Coleman get up one morning and walk right out of her life – changing her name, holing up in a grotty house in North London, taking a dead-end job where she won’t be found. Has she had a breakdown? Was it to escape her dysfunctional family, especially her malevolent twin Caroline who always seemed to hate her? And what is the anniversary that looms, threatening to force her to confront her past? No-one has ever guessed her secret. Will you?

The cover of One Step Too Far is a row of familiar orange-striped train tickets, and the opening chapter reveals why: Emily Coleman, on the surface a happy, successful, enviable woman, has left her old life behind in pursuit of self-inflicted disappearance in London. Why Emily has left is the central mystery of the book: all the reader knows is that something has happened that has caused Emily to turn her back on her marriage, her family, and her job, desperate to forget or erase the traumatic events that have led her here.

The book switches between Emily's current life as she attempts to reinvent herself in London, finding a home and a friend and a job, all under her new identity, and events from the past, that focus heavily on Emily's relationship with her troubled twin sister Caroline. If Emily had it all, then Caroline was always second fiddle, a source of tension, aggravation, and anger for her twin.

Seskis doesn't give much away, and that's the key hook of One Step Too Far - it promises a twist in the leagues of Gone Girl, and it delivers a decent blow when the twist finally comes. The writing was taut and fast-paced, and I spent a fair amount of time wondering how long Emily could possibly get away with her disappearance and dual life.

It is a strange, less than realistic event that finally provides the catalyst for the events of the novel to fall into place, but this fades into the background when the story begins to unfold and your attention shifts to how Seskis has pulled off the central piece of deceit. When the novel starts to piece together the truth, and the reader is on the other side of the twist, the novel seemed to lose pace a little bit - there were a couple of subsidiary 'twists' that just dragged the story on unnecessarily. Overall, however, One Step Too Far is a gripping novel, and worth the read.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

Book source: Bought from Amazon.

Review: The Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin

The Boys from Brazil

Ira Levin

Kindle edition, first published 1976

Goodreads

Alive & hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project--the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project & informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.

Thus Ira Levin opens one of the strangest & most masterful novels of his career. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious Angel of Death? One man alone must answer these questions & stop the killings--Lieberman, himself aging & thought by some to be losing his grip on reality.

Ira Levin has a knack for making the implausible seem plausible. More than that, he has a knack for horror. The same creeping horror - insidious rather than jumpy, but no less monstrous and twice as unsettling - that permeates his two most famous novels, Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives, is put to good use here, this time with old Nazis as the target.

Ensconced in South America, the ruthless doctor of the Nazi regime, Josef Mengele, has hatched an intricate, elaborate plot. He sends out his best former SS men - his best assassins - to kill a list of men across Europe and America, all men of the same age, all civil servants. The man that stands between Mengele and his audacious plan is Yakov Lieberman, an aging Jewish man with a reputation for hunting down old Nazis and bringing them to justice. Tipped off by a young American investigative journalist, Yakov is in a race to try and stop the murders - and figure out the bigger plan that lies behind them - before Mengele can proceed too far with his evil intentions.

As ever, Levin's writing is taut, and the plot unfolds carefully, never revealing too much, intriguing and fascinating all at the same time. The big picture comes into view slowly, and then all at once, as Yakov realises the intent behind the seemingly bizarre orders that Mengele has sent his men out with. From the opening scene, when Mengele gathers his SS men in a Japanese restaurant to impart his instructions, you can't help but be hooked into the story. The ending is no less gripping - once again, Levin manages to raises more questions than he answers, with Yakov left to make a decision between morality and the prevention of future evil. The tense showdown close to the end of the book is so brilliantly done, so finely executed, that there was no putting the book down until the end.

Overall rating: 8/10

Book source: Bought from Amazon.

Review: The Hive, Gill Hornby

The Hive

Gill Hornby

Little, Brown, 2013

Goodreads

Welcome to St Ambrose Primary School. A world of friendships, fights and feuding. And that's just the mothers.

It's the start of another school year at St Ambrose. But while the children are in the classroom colouring in, their mothers are learning sharper lessons on the other side of the school gates. Lessons in friendship. Lessons in betrayal. Lessons in the laws of community, the transience of power... and how to get invited to lunch.

The Hive centres on the school gates of a primary school, where a group of women spend a year negotiating old friendships and forging new ones, dealing with domestic grief and domestic bliss, worrying about their children, and fundraising their arses off. Bea, the 'Queen Bee', rules the group, delegating all the work and taking all the credit, and making everyone feel like crap while she's doing it (unless you're one of the chosen ones, of course). Rachel, the main character, exists on the periphery of the group, alongside Heather (desperately eager to please) and Georgie (couldn’t give a shit) and a host of other mums, including posh newbie Bubba and mysterious, unflappable Melissa.

The Hive sounded interesting – the ups and downs of female friendship, and what seemed like great potential for a bit of black humour. There are some sharp, well-observed parts early on that had me hoping for something a bit dark and wicked underneath this middle-class-suburban-yummy-mummies scenario.

Instead, I got an annoying hive metaphor (I GET IT) and a lot of “meh”. The well-observed seemed to descend into stereotype a few too many times for my liking. There were too many instances of women saying “lolz” out loud (and really, one instance would have been too many), and a really weird scene where all the women apparently stood on a table to compare body fat. Er.

The Hive had promise, but for the most part failed to deliver. I felt like I was “about halfway through” for days on end. The book takes the reader through a school year, focusing for the most part on different fundraising occasions, that highlight the in/out cliquey nature of the group and the changing dynamics of the relationships. There were some good bits – Heather’s health scare, and Bea’s engineering of it so it was all about her, stood out and seemed sharp. But somewhere around the midway point, the romance element pops up, and the book started pulling in two different directions. (And the ending was just aggravating – neat and sugary and a little bit deflating.)

The Hive is okay, and not a bad debut – it just lacked the punch that I felt it could have had. An interesting observation of friendship and its complicated dynamics, but in the end it was inconsequential at best.

Overall rating: 5/10

Book source: Received as a gift.

Review: The Stepford Wives, Ira Levin

The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin

Kindle edition; first published 1972

Goodreads

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret--a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, 'The Stepford Wives' is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

This was a re-read for me, and one that I think was actually better the second time around. Joanna and Walter Eberhart and their family have moved to the idyllic town of Stepford, leaving behind a city that Joanna in particular loves: New York. A professional photographer and active member of the women's movement, Joanna is keen to meet like-minded neighbours, only to find that Stepford is not exactly a bastion of progression. While Walter ingratiates himself at the local Men's Association, Joanna is left dealing with women who'd rather buff their floors to within an inch of their lives than venture beyond their own doorsteps.

The Stepford Wives is fantastic and disturbing and, above all, chilling. Levin doesn't need monsters and things that go bump in the night: he just needs to create a situation that is both ludicrous and not ludicrous enough to dismiss. As Joanna starts to piece things together and gets closer to unravelling the mystery of Stepford, he conclusions seem both ridiculous and... possible. It is that hint of the possible that makes The Stepford Wives work, and makes it so effective in the process.

On a second reading, I was able to spot the seeds that Levin plants from the very beginning, all of which come together later in the plot to great effect. The Stepford Wives deals in the limits of a society's views on women and their 'place', in the value we place on beauty and youth and silence, and (as Chuck Palahniuk points out in the introduction) is still as relevant today as when it was written.

And that final chapter is still like being punched in the stomach.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Review: Girl Reading, Katie Ward

Girl Reading

Katie Ward

Virago, 2011

Goodreads

Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in 17th-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A young woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure. Each chapter of this richly textured debut takes us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be, and as the connections accumulate, the narrative leads us into the present and beyond - an inspired celebration of women reading and the artists who have caught them in the act.

Rating this book made me conscious of how I'm not entirely sure rating books is always useful. At times, when I was reading it, this book felt like a 5 star read. Other times, I wanted to throw it out the window and move onto one of numerous other books sitting there, imploring me, "Cut your losses. Come join us."

The blurb sums the book up neatly - seven stories, all focusing on a girl (or woman) reading. These stories are interspersed throughout history, crossing time and place to bring different - unlinked - characters into focus. The final story is the connecting point, but for me that didn't really alter my view of the book. It's an interesting way of drawing things together, and it made me conscious of myself as the reader of these stories (and essentially, I suppose, as another 'girl reading'), but it's not a twist, and it doesn't change what has come before. The final story was actually my least favourite - I didn't feel like I needed things to be drawn together, and it was the least compelling part for me.

Most of the stories I really enjoyed. Ward is a great writer - not showy, but evocative and considered, and the stories are well-crafted. My favourite story was Jeannine's (Shoreditch, 2008), perhaps because of it's contemporary setting, and I enjoyed the stories featuring the psychic sisters (Victorian England), and the Dutch servant. The opening story, set in 14th century Siena, didn't grab me so much, so perhaps the book and I didn't get off to the greatest of starts.

The problem was that I felt like I should be enjoying it more than I was. It's worth mentioning that the speech isn't in speechmarks at any point, and although I can see how it might be effective (in an immersive sort of way), it's actually quite irritating, and I kept having to stop to work out who was speaking. It's a very good book, but not one that grabbed me and held on. I felt lukewarm towards it throughout (probably with the exception of Jeannine's story), and knowing that the characters would only be around for a certain amount of pages meant there was never much investment in them. It felt like a book you should be able to immerse yourself in, and yet there wasn't enough appeal for me to give myself up to it - instead, I found myself willing the end to come so I could read something else.

I don't want to end on a totally negative note, because this is a well-written collection of stories, capturing various points in time and exploring the emotion and actions that lie beneath. As a woman who reads (and reads and reads), it was nice to see a kaleidoscope of other women doing exactly the same thing, and what might be going on behind the scenes.

Overall rating: 6.5/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library (on my mum's recommendation).

Review: All The Summer Girls, Meg Donohue

All The Summer Girls

Meg Donohue

William Morrow, 2013

Goodreads

In Philadelphia, good girl Kate is dumped by her fiance the day she learns she is pregnant with his child. In New York City, beautiful stay-at-home mom Vanessa is obsessively searching the Internet for news of an old flame. And in San Francisco, Dani, the aspiring writer who can't seem to put down a book--or a cocktail--long enough to open her laptop, has just been fired... again.

In an effort to regroup, Kate, Vanessa, and Dani retreat to the New Jersey beach town where they once spent their summers. Emboldened by the seductive cadences of the shore, the women being to realize how much their lives, and friendships, have been shaped by the choices they made one fateful night on the beach eight years earlier--and the secrets that only now threaten to surface.

All The Summer Girls reunites three female friends, now in their late-20s, for a summer weekend in Avalon, New Jersey, the site of numerous summers from their teenage and college days. All three women are at a point of near-crisis: Kate is pregnant and has just broken up with her fiance; Vanessa is a stay-at-home mum with a rich husband who has just admitted an infidelity; and Dani is living in San Francisco, broke and failing to finish her first novel.

What I enjoyed most about All The Summer Girls was the focus on the friendships between the three women, particularly the nuances of a three-way friendship and the ways in which certain situations cause different 2/1 'splits'. More generally, Donohue writes well on women-as-friends, balancing the minor, petty squabbles with bigger injustices, while recognising the bond that continues to exist between Kate, Vanessa and Dani. Although each conforms to a certain 'type', they didn't feel like caricatures on the page, and each character got their own perspective, which probably helped.

Underlying their trip to Avalon is a classic submerged tragedy, something that happened a few summers before, the last time they were all on the island together. Each of the women thinks they are responsible; each has let it eat away at her in the intervening years. This part of the plot didn't actually interest me as much as the contemporary problems they were facing, and I felt like the book was stronger when dealing with the individual dilemmas and problems of the three main characters, rather than harking back to this particular event in the past. It became clear quite early on that all of them (and, in a way, none of them) could take the blame for what happened, and the flashbacks, which revealed the truth gradually, were less interesting to me.

All The Summer Girls meanders to a conclusion before I realised I was so far through - the pace is gentle, and I feel like it could have been meatier - again, probably by focusing more on the current issues facing each of the women. Dani is adrift and wondering what to do with her life, Kate is facing single motherhood, and Vanessa is wondering whether she can ever trust her husband again (and whether she wants to). All the solutions to these problems seemed quite benign in the end - I was waiting for Dani to make some kind of radical plan, or for Vanessa to take charge of her own life, or even for Kate to agonise over whether she wanted to keep the baby or not, but none of these things really transpired. There seemed to be a lot of reaction to things, rather than action, which was disappointing when faced with three smart, capable women on the page.

Although there was a little something lacking for me, All The Summer Girls is a good summer read, and an enjoyable look at how friendships change and endure over time. Just don't expect any surprises.

Overall rating: 7/10

Book source: Received as a gift from my brother.

Review: Sisterland, Curtis Sittenfeld

Sisterland 

Curtis Sittenfeld 

Doubleday, 2013

Goodreads

For identical twins, Kate and Violet are about as unlike as two peas from the same pod can be. Except in one respect - they share a hidden gift they call 'the Senses', a special kind of intuition that can allow them to see things that are yet to come. After Kate inadvertently reveals their secret when they are thirteen years old, they are set on diverging paths into their adult lives.

Twenty years later Kate is a suburban housewife who suppresses her premonitions in the hope of leading a normal family life, while Violet lives alone and works as a psychic medium. Then one day Violet ignites a media storm by predicting a major earthquake in the St Louis area where they live.

As the day Violet has announced for the earthquake draws nearer, the sisters must grapple with the legacy of the past, the confusion of the present, and the unsettling glimpses they both have of the future.

Sittenfeld is one of my favourite authors; an author whose books are immediately placed on my TBR list, whatever the subject, whose books I am constantly recommending to other people, who is guaranteed to restore my faith in reading within an opening page. Sisterland focuses on a pair of twins, Violet and Kate (formerly Daisy), who as children had some sort of psychic awareness - what they refer to as 'senses'.

As adults, Violet has embraced her psychic abilities, and lives a somewhat unconventional life, particularly next to Kate. Kate is married with two young children, a stay at home mother living an ordinary existence in a nice St. Louis suburb. At the same time that Violet is predicting a natural disaster in the city, garnering nationwide attention, Kate is concerned with the more mundane aspects of her everyday life: cooking dinner, getting the kids to bed, organising play dates at the park. While Violet works with her 'senses', Kate has suppressed hers to the point that they are almost completely dormant.

Violet's prediction causes derision and panic, depending on who you ask, and it doesn't help that Kate's husband is a scientist, and therefore privately and publicly sceptical of Violet's suggestions of an impending earthquake. Kate is embarrassed by her sister, and yet can't bring herself to dimiss Violet or her claims. The tension that builds as the prediction date comes nearer envelopes Kate's relationship with Violet, her relationship with her husband and children, and her memories of her own childhood and adolescence, memories that are interspersed throughout the narrative.

Sittenfeld's writing is first class - from the first page I was happy to be swept up in the story and see where it took me. The characters are always nuanced and believable: I was struck by how, even when people did strange things, they weren't unexpected things as far as the character went. Sittenfeld also avoids a good twin / bad twin binary, even though Kate herself seems to believe in this distinction. As the conventional twin, the presumed 'good' twin and the book's protagonist (everything is filtered through Kate), she is not always entirely likable. Her judgmental behaviour towards her sister, regarding her profession, her relationships, her sexuality, and her whole way of living, was never far from the surface, yet this was balanced by her desire for normality and her insecurity in the face of her husband's successful female colleagues - it was easy to be annoyed at Kate in one moment, and then sympathetic in another (and later, frustrated by some of her actions!). An excellent novel, and further proof of Sittenfeld's immense talent as a writer and storyteller.

Overall rating: 9.5/10 

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: All That I Am, Anna Funder

All That I Am

Anna Funder

Viking, 2011

Goodreads

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless, her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller, her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth's husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.

In Stasiland, Funder wrote a fantastic, revealing book about life beyond the Berlin Wall in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), focusing on the role of the Stasi, or secret police, and those who resisted them. I read Stasiland about three years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think I went into All That I Am expecting to be blown away again, so I was a little disappointed to find that I was struggling to get through the earlier sections.

It seems unfair, really, because the story being told in All That I Am is just as powerful and, at its root, just as compelling. It is based on real-life events, and uses a dual narrative, alternating between the characters of Ruth Becker/Wesemann and Ernst Toller, both of whom are politically leftist and opposed to the Nazi regime in Germany, which is slowly being cemented in the early 1930s. Toller is a big opposition figure, a powerful writer and vocal critic of the Nazis and Hitler. Ruth holds the same political views, but is what I thought of as the more 'real' character - normal, unremarkable, caught up in work that she believes is right, and believes is worth risking her own survival for. Toller and Ruth are linked by Ruth's vibrant cousin Dora Fabian, who is full of conviction and a determination to show the world what is really happening in Germany - and how this ultimately threatens the rest of Europe and the world. Dora is really the main character here, yet can only be seen through the eyes of the two who love her best - never quite grasped, as in life.

The book begins in Germany and moves eventually to Britain, where the characters are exiled after being expelled from their home country. They continue their resistance efforts and Hitler gains more power within Germany and more influence outside of Germany. Part of the book occurs in flashback, as both Toller and Ruth strive to remember and record the past before it is too late.

The book began in a promising way, and ended on a powerful note. The last quarter of the book was particularly compelling, and when I finished I was left re-evaluating the rest of the book, wondering why I had faltered a little bit in the middle. I think my main problem was I kept getting Toller and Hans confused - they are very different characters, but neither seemed to have a distinctive voice, and sometimes I would mix the two of them up, or conflate their characters. I much preferred Ruth's chapters, which often began with her current life in Australia as an old woman, before reverting back to her days in London.

Funder captured the atmosphere of fear and distrust really well, and it was interesting to see characters interacting who were both untrusting of each other, yet forced to trust through circumstance. This is the second book this year that I have read that deals with pre-WWII Germany (the other being Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin) and it was interesting to see both the similarities - the gradual political changes, the realities of violence and brutality being covered up - and the differences, as All That I Am focuses much more closely on the politics and the personal sacrifices made by those who tried desperately to warn the world of what was coming.

Overall rating: 7/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

This review counts towards my Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

Review: The Dinner, Herman Koch

The Dinner

Herman Koch

Atlantic Books, 2012 (2009)

Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett

Goodreads

A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen year old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrates, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

The Dinner takes place over the numerous courses of one dinner, one evening in Amsterdam. Paul, his wife Claire, his politician brother Serge and Serge's wife Babette meet at an exclusive restaurant. Ostensibly, the meal is a pleasant evening out between two couples, yet under the surface a horrific event lingers, boiling over just as dessert arrives.

As you might expect from a novel based entirely around one dinner, there is a lot of detail and a lot of insight into the minutiae of the lives of the Lohman family, particularly Paul, from whose perspective the dinner is viewed. The opening few chapters were biting and funny and razor sharp in their dismantling of people's public facades and secret intentions, and it was easy to see things from Paul's point of view as he observes the power games that he thinks his brother is currently playing with him.

These small observations and reflections on relationships and families and past events continue throughout the dinner, as the backgrounds of both Lohman families start to become clearer, and the horrific event is revealed. The Dinner is very clever, and rather insidious in its manipulation of the reader, as the parameters of reasonable behaviour start to shift before you really realise it.

The Dinner is quite difficult to talk about without giving too much away, but I highly recommend giving it a go. It's revelations about middle class privileges and the horrors that parents become in pursuit of their children's futures made this a compelling read, and one of my favourites of the year.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

This book counts towards my 2013 Translation Challenge.

Review: It's Different For Girls, Jo Brand

It's Different For Girls

Jo Brand

Review, 2005

Goodreads

(Amusingly enough, my library copy has the word "sex" covered over with a small square of white paper.)

Hastings in the seventies is not the coolest place to be. As Rachel and Susan teeter on the brink of adolescence, they realise safety lies in numbers and the best chance of surviving their teens is to stick together. Their friendship protects them against the trials of parents, classmates, soggy chips, warm beer, aspiring guitar heroes, stoned hippies, men's clubs, derivative three-chord bands and emotional neediness and weediness.

But when Dave, sophisticated London art student and unattainable boyfriend, enters their lives, they discover that sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll aren't always everything they've dreamed of. And then punk music detonates the status quo and nothing will ever be the same again.

Jo Brand is one of my favourite comedians, so when I saw this in the library I snapped it up. It's Different For Girls focuses on Rachel and Susan, two teenage girls living in Hastings in the 70s. Rachel has just moved there from London, and the two girls become best friends (and sometimes best enemies), despite the fact that Susan's mum Terry thinks that Rachel's family are too stuck-up, and Rachel's mum Helen thinks Susan's family are common and to be avoided.

The social nuances of their friendship, and their disapproving families, were amusing and felt very genuine (I remember my mum passing judgement on some of my friends and their parents at times!). One of the strengths of the novel is the way it captures a particular period (70s Britain) and the experience of growing up in a small, slightly faded town. Hastings loses out to the glamour of Brighton and the somewhat forbidden appeal of London, and both girls seem a little bit disappointed with what their lives have to offer.

The book encompasses the period of a few years, from more benign fallings-out between the girls, accompanied by Rachel's feeling that while Susan is being felt up by boys under the pier, Rachel would rather be at home with a cup of tea, to later incidents of drinking and sex and discovering the joys of punk music. Doomed to always be the 'friend' next to pretty girl Susan, Rachel meets a boy and things all start to go right and wrong all at the same time.

The ups and downs of female friendship felt very real. There were some funny moments and lots of incisive observations, which I think comes from Brand's background as a comedian, but occasionally I felt like the writing fell a little bit flat, or that there was a bit too much 'tell' rather than 'show' when describing some of the characters and their thoughts. It often felt like it might work better written in the first person, as a more confessional account of being a teenage girl in a dull town in the 70s, as sometimes I felt a little bit distant from both girls.

I'm not sure I totally bought into the Dave storyline, although he did get a nice line - "I can't find anyone else like you anywhere". The novel seemed stronger when it focused on the girls, and Paul/Pauline was a nice addition quite late on in the book. The ending seemed a bit rushed and rather neat, and although the blurb promises punk music and lots of bands are mentioned (before they become hugely famous, like Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Sex Pistols) there's no real feeling of being immersed in any particular scene.

A good read, with some funny parts and some very dry observations, but ultimately it felt a little bit like something was missing.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

Weidenfeld & Nicolson/Orion, 2012

Goodreads

Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears.

The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war.

Trying to talk about Gone Girl is a bit like trying to talk about A Song of Ice and Fire with people who are a book or two behind you. You're desperate to analyse it, but you don't want to give anything away. This book kept me hooked from start to finish, to the point that I had a dream that I was suspected of murder and had to try and explain why I'd hidden the "evidence" in our paper recycling box. (I would be a rubbish criminal, evidently.)

Nick and Amy have been married for five years, and for the last year or two have been living in Missouri, where Nick grew up, after losing their jobs and leaving New York City. On the morning of their anniversary, Amy goes missing, and what follows is the police investigation, told from Nick's perspective, inter-cut with sections taken from Amy's diary. Through the two perspectives, you get a pretty brutal, intimate look at their marriage and the ways in which their relationship has developed over the last few years. Flynn does an excellent job of really pinpointing Nick and Amy's personalities and making them simultaneously aggravating, horrifying, and yet quite often sympathetic. It's difficult to like either of them a lot of time, but I found more than once that I was hoping for a particular outcome or sympathising with one over the other (only to change my mind later on!).

The book is in three sections, and the first two were totally compelling. The third section was a little stranger, and I felt a little bit more disconnected from this part. I struggled to understand the motivations of some of the characters, and while I think that this was probably an intentional move on Flynn's part, it felt like it dipped a little towards the end. This is a really minor quibble, though - Gone Girl is so tightly wound up and so intriguing throughout, with layer upon layer of mystery, that the whole thing was excellent, if more than a little disturbing at times.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Nemesis, Philip Roth

Nemesis

Philip Roth

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Goodreads

In the "stifling heat of equatorial Newark," a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, lifelong disability, and even death. This is the startling theme of Philip Roth’s wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children. At the center of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor’s dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground—and on the everyday realities he faces—Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic, the anger, the bewilderment, the suffering, and the pain. 

Moving between the smoldering, malodorous streets of besieged Newark and Indian Hill, a pristine children’s summer camp high in the Poconos—whose "mountain air was purified of all contaminants"—Roth depicts a decent, energetic man with the best intentions struggling in his own private war against the epidemic. Roth is tenderly exact at every point about Cantor’s passage into personal disaster, and no less exact about the condition of childhood. Through this story runs the dark questions that haunt all four of Roth’s late short novels, Everyman, Indignation, The Humbling, and now Nemesis: What kind of accidental choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand the onslaught of circumstance?

Nemesis is classed as the final of Roth's four short novels, published between 2006 and 2010, and the final Roth novel full stop, if the reports in late 2012 are right, as Roth himself declared that he was "done". While I struggled a little with The Humbling, the earlier two novels, Everyman and Indignation, were both excellent, particularly Everyman. Nemesis, happily, falls (for me) into this second camp.

It tells the story of Bucky Cantor, who spends the summer of 1944 as director of the Chancellor Avenue playground in Weequahic, Newark, New Jersey, a largely Jewish section of the city that is being ravaged by polio. What starts with a couple of boys at the playground quickly turns into an epidemic, and Bucky starts to agonise over how he can keep the kids safe. I liked Bucky - he is gutted that he's been excluded from the army, where his two best friends are fighting in Europe, and instead he focuses all his attention on this unexpected war at home, against a virus that in 1944 has no known cure. Bucky loves the playground kids, and is dedicated to getting them involved in sports, and when he's not at the playground he's caring for his elderly grandmother, who brought him up, and missing his girlfriend Marcia, who is working at a summer camp in the Pocono Mountains.

There is a horrible sense of inevitability throughout the book, as more and more kids get ill, and a choice that Bucky makes partway through the novel has much wider ramifications, or at least it seems that way to Bucky. Roth does not offer up any kind of happy ending here, and the last section of the book concerns Bucky as a middle-aged man in 1971, meeting one of the kids from the playground, Arnie Mesnikoff, and recounting how his life turned out after that fateful summer. The book is actually narrated by Arnie (there is one clue to this, early on, before Arnie himself appears near the end), and is meant as a record of the conversations Bucky and Arnie have had on these weekly lunch meetings over twenty five years later.

The blurb suggests that these late Roth novels have dealt with themes of "choice" and "circumstance", and certainly Nemesis owes more to circumstances than to choices: though Bucky makes two big decisions in Nemesis, it is deliberately unclear whether either of these have altered the course of events in any significant way, which just adds to the agony of the story. As the final book of Roth's career, it deals with death, God, and the anguish that comes with a fundamental lack of control: not a particularly happy read, but one that sticks with you long afterwards.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Doppler, Erlend Loe

Doppler

Erlend Loe

Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw

Head of Zeus, 2012 (2004)

Goodreads

I have been waiting for another of Erlend Loe's books to be translated into English ever since reading Naive. Super, one of my absolute favourite, I-want-you-to-read-it-but-I'm-not-giving-you-my-copy books. When I received a copy of Doppler for Christmas, I had to stop myself diving straight in and devouring the whole thing. (It's a pretty short book.)

There's always the fear with a highly-anticipated book that it won't live up to expectations, and Doppler does start rather unconventionally by having Doppler himself killing an elk in the forest, but a few pages in there is a wonderfully long and involved rant about children's television and a dissection of the role of the Fat Controller in Thomas the Tank Engine, which made me laugh out loud and convinced me that this was another Loe novel worth savouring.

Doppler's father has recently died, and when he is out cycling one day he falls off his bike and has an epiphany of sorts: he will live in the forest and leave behind his old life, which Doppler has come to believe is tainted by consumerism, conformity, aspiration and too much 'niceness'. Discussing his decision to leave his family and his home back in a suburb of Oslo, he says: "I'm not exaggerating when I say my wife thinks it's strange that I'm living up in the forest now. She doesn't think much of it, it seems. I don't blame her."

It is Loe's writing that I love and that I find so funny and tragic all at the same time. It would be wrong to say Doppler is on a quest to honour his father, because part of his living-in-the-forest is a decision to do nothing, to stop being useful, and to simply cultivate boredom alongside the baby elk, Bongo, who Doppler has adopted and who quickly becomes his best friend. Yet honouring his father - or, perhaps, simply remembering him - is a central theme of the book, triggered by Doppler's realisation that he didn't know his dad at all, after his mother shows him a collection of photographs his father took while he was alive, all depicting a place he'd done a piss.

There is a slightly absurd quality to Doppler, and this is where a lot of the magic seems to lie. Doppler is frustrated with his teenage daughter, Nora, who is obsessed with Tolkien and all things Elvish, and is eager to rescue his young son Gregus from the trappings of middle class life before it's too late. He attends a parents' evening at his wife's request, and shocks the other parents with his unkempt appearance; he invites a burglar into his family's home; and he befriends a neighbour who is also attempting to come to terms with his father's death. Doppler is a sympathetic character, a man trying to come to terms with his life and wider society, never vindictive but often frustrated with the pedantry of other people, dinner parties with fake friends, and the endless arguments over which bathroom suite is better.

Throughout, Loe's writing (brilliantly translated) is blackly humourous, sparse and funny. It's the tone that made Naive. Super such a joy to read, and Doppler has a similar feel: understated, hopeful and despairing all at the same time. Doppler's attempt to discover what really matters with the help of a baby elk and a tiny tent  is sometimes touching, often hilarious and always unique.

"I am a cyclist. And I'm a husband and a father and a son and an employee. And a house owner. And lots of other things. We are so many things."

Overall rating: 9.5/10

Book source: Received as a gift from my dad.

Doppler counts towards my 2013 Translation Challenge.

Review: Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

Pride & Prejudice

Jane Austen

Kindle edition (public domain), 1998 (1813)

Goodreads

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited, while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

So, I finally did it. My knowledge of the great love affair between Elizabeth and Darcy is now no longer reliant on what I remember from the ITV series Lost in Austen. Rejoice.

It is odd to be writing a review of a book so seemingly ubiquitous, a book that I always felt like I should have read, to the point where reading it now was almost more odd than never reading it at all. Surely I should have written an exam on this as a sixteen year old, not read it for fun ten years later. I have to say I wasn't convinced straight away, and about halfway through I abandoned ship for a while. While the story was interesting, I found the writing a little bit stodgy and all the Mr. ____ and Miss ____ characters kept getting jumbled in my mind. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn in Hertfordshire, have five daughters, all unwed; on Mr. Bennet's death, their estate will pass to a cousin, Mr. Collins, leaving Mrs. Bennet and her daughters in a bit of a fix. As a result, Mrs. Bennet - a vulgar, not particularly likable woman - is intent on marrying off her daughters and snagging any likely bachelor that passes by their house. Enter Mr. Bingley, eligible and rich, and so the events of the book begin. Mrs. Bennet conspires to have her eldest daughter Jane stranded at Mr. Bingley's home, where she might impress him and obtain a marriage proposal, and as the novel unfolds the pursuit of a stable, prosperous future for her daughters becomes Mrs. Bennet's chief aim, even as their social standing, their mother's vulgarity, and their own hopes are sent to destabilise matters.

Though Elizabeth and Darcy are at the centre of Pride & Prejudice, this was less about the two of them than I imagined, and Austen brings in a lot of interesting elements regarding the position of women in society, the reliance on marrying (and marrying well), the destruction and shame of lost 'virtue' for a young woman, and the power of class and money. Elizabeth, as expected, is a compelling and vibrant heroine, headstrong and lively without being insufferable, and she finds a nice counterpoint in her more forgiving sister Jane. The younger Bennet sisters are less fleshed out - Mary is studious, while Kitty and Lydia (she of the nearly-lost virtue) are vacuous and silly, much like their mother. I was pleasantly surprised by the wit in Austen's writing - the style took a while to get used to, and it felt a little laborious at first, but once I got into the flow of things it was easier to pick out the humour.

I enjoyed the way that the novel was propelled forwards by chance encounters, idle speculations and snippets of conversation, as well as a nice dollop of temporary misunderstanding and missed letters. The plot meanders a little at times, perhaps because ultimately this is a novel of words rather than action. Yet overall this was a long overdue read for me, with much of the book's appeal not in the famous love story but in the issues that Austen raises regarding women and freedom that give Pride & Prejudice its edge.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

Book source: Free Kindle download.

Review: Tigers in Red Weather, Liza Klaussmann

Tigers In Red Weather

Liza Klaussmann

Picador, 2012

Goodreads

The epitome of East Coast glamour, Tiger House is where the beautiful and the damned have always come to play in summer, scene of martinis and moonlit conspiracies, and newly inherited by the sleek, beguiling Nick. The Second World War is just ending, Nick’s cousin Helena has left her in search of married bliss in Hollywood, and Nick’s husband is coming home. Everything is about to change. Their children will surprise them. A decade later, on the cusp of adolescence, Nick’s daughter and Helena’s son make a sinister discovery that plunges the island’s bright heat into private shadow. Summer seemed to arrive at that moment, with its mysterious mixture of salt, cold flesh and fuel. Magnificently told by each of the five characters in turn, Tigers in Red Weather is a simmering novel of passion, betrayal and secret violence beneath a polished and fragile facade.

Sometimes a line or two in a book just grabs me. There's a line not long into Tigers In Red Weather where one of the principal characters, Nick, is thinking about her relationship with her husband. She muses that it was "meant to be different" for the two of them, different from the rest of the world, different from other relationships, because they were "special". I'm paraphrasing slightly, because the book went back to the library before I could make a note of the exact quote, but it was such a recognisable sentiment, and so well crafted, that I knew I was in for a treat.

I wanted to read Liza Klaussmann's debut novel ever since I saw a sampler of it in Waterstones, and for the most part it didn't disappoint. Nick and Helena are cousins, and the novel starts with them at the end of the Second World War, living together in a small apartment, poor but reasonably happy and muddling along. But this is an end rather than a beginning: Helena, whose first husband has died in the war, is moving to LA, while Nick is moving to Florida to be with her husband Hughes, back from the war and ready to continue their life together. The book passes through five rounds of narration - Nick, her daughter Daisy, Helena, Hughes and Helena's son Ed - as the family move beyond the war and into the 1950s and 60s, the action revolving around the family's summer home (Tiger House) and the tensions and secrets swirling around the family as the years pass.

The writing was wonderfully evocative without being over the top, and the feeling of the book reminded me a lot of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend in many ways - the too-hot summers, the hint of secrets and illicit relationships, the quiet despair, the children who stumble upon something that can't be undone. Plot-wise, it meandered along nicely. There are no big shocks, not even in the final section, which is meant to shed some light on the preceding events. That's not to say that it was predictable, but rather that things happened and were absorbed into the novel, rather than presented as devastating or surprising events. Imagine a slightly drunken summer evening at a glamorous old house, all champagne and lights and whispers and fleeting colourful images, and that's kind of what this novel felt like.

The ending fell a little bit flat for me - I felt that Tigers started out stronger than it finished, which is what led me to a slightly lower rating overall, despite my conviction that it was a five-star read at the start. Somehow it seems to be building up to more, and the opening narrative viewpoints felt more vibrant than some of the later ones. Nevertheless, Tigers In Red Weather is a glorious, immersing novel that oozes betrayal, lust, jealousy and family secrets, all hung on five characters who remain difficult to fathom and not always likable, but ultimately worth the ride.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Fatherland, Robert Harris

Fatherland

Robert Harris

Arrow, 2012 [20th Anniversary Edition] (1992)

Goodreads

It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb.

As March discovers the identity of the body, he uncovers signs of a conspiracy that could go to the very top of the German Reich. And, with the Gestapo just one step behind, March, together with an American journalist, is caught up in a race to discover and reveal the truth -- a truth that has already killed, a truth that could topple governments, a truth that will change history.


Fatherland is an alternate history novel, set in a world in which Hitler and the Nazis have triumphed in WWII. The book's events take place in 1964 in Berlin, which stands as the capital of the Greater German Reich, a city dominated physically by the looming dome of the Great Hall, overshadowing the area around Unter den Linden, and in everyday life by the vast bureaucracy of the regime, which keeps a close watch on all of its citizens. Eastern Europe has been dissolved into the Reich, and the countries of Western Europe, still in existence, form the European Community, over which Germany maintains a large amount of control. Only Switzerland remains outside of any form of German power, essentially a no-man's-land right next door. The USA is aiding Russia in its guerilla war against Germany, and Germany and the US are the two Cold War powers, edging--perhaps--towards detente.

In the middle of all of this, the novel focuses on Xavier March, an officer in the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei), who is investigating the death of a prominent Party member in the week leading up to the vast celebrations for the Fuhrer's 75th birthday (Fuhrertag). March is in many ways a typical police-officer-in-a-novel. He's divorced,  and his relationship with his young son is strained, particularly when it becomes known that his son has been informing on him to the Gestapo, who are charged with investigating subversive behaviour. March is in dogged pursuit of the truth, and his suspicions are heightened by the case he is on. Rather than leave things alone, he embarks on a dangerous quest to uncover the truth, aided by an American journalist and borrowing favours from his friends in various government offices, much to their discomfort.

At the centre of Fatherland emerges the question of what happened to Europe's Jewish population during the war. The Holocaust has never been revealed in this version of events: Jewish people have simply been 'relocated' to the East. The case that March is investigating slowly becomes intertwined with the truth behind this whitewashed version of events, putting him in even more danger.

I am a big fan of alternate history and of crime novels, and in most respects this was an excellent book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Harris creates a depressing, grey image of Berlin after twenty five years of Nazi rule, a population cowed by the knowledge that they are being watched, that their friends and neighbours are compelled to report undesirable behaviour. The graffiti March sees on a wall - "Anyone found not enjoying themselves will be shot" - sums up the oppressive atmosphere enveloping the city and the wider reaches of the German Empire. The historical information that the book is built upon seeps in as the book unfolds, rather than being dumped on the reader all at once. While this made the crime-novel aspect of the book more enjoyable, I did often find myself wanting more details. While there are explanations of how Germany came to win the war, and of the country's relationship with the USA and Russia, the book was quite sparse on details of everyday life, and it would have been interesting if that had been more well-developed.

The crime side of things was a little slow at times, and built up quite gradually, but the final third of the book was much faster-paced as everything started to come together. March is a compelling main character, increasingly disillusioned by his life as a police officer and (by default) a member of the SS, investigating the case in front of him even when threatened with the SS Honour Court and faced with interrogations and a regime to which death comes easy.

The ending was deliberately ambiguous - both hopeful and devastating all at the same time. While there were some slow parts in the middle, by the end I couldn't put this book down. A gripping, slightly uncomfortable read at times, highly recommended.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Book source: Bought from Waterstones, Brighton.

Review: The Sisters Brothers, Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers

Patrick DeWitt

Granta Books, 2011

Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. The enigmatic and powerful man known only as the Commodore has ordered it, and his henchmen, Eli and Charlie Sisters, will make sure of it. Though Eli doesn't share his brother's appetite for whiskey and killing, he's never known anything else. But their prey isn't an easy mark, and on the road from Oregon City to Warm's gold-mining claim outside Sacramento, Eli begins to question what he does for a living and whom he does it for.

With The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt pays homage to the classic Western, transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de force. Filled with a remarkable cast of characters losers, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells from all stripes of life and told by a complex and compelling narrator, it is a violent, lustful odyssey through the underworld of the 1850s frontier that beautifully captures the humor, melancholy, and grit of the Old West and two brothers bound by blood, violence, and love.

The Sisters Brothers is a slightly off-kilter affair. On the surface, it tells the story of Eli and Charlie Sisters, a notorious pair of brothers known for their ruthlessness and possessing a formidable reputation as killers. The story is told through the eyes of Eli, the more sensitive brother, who despairs of Charlie's drunkenness and penchant for violence, but who nevertheless follows his brother on their missions for the enigmatic Commodore. The book follows the brothers as they take up one of these missions, this time to kill a man called Warm, who has been tracked down in California.

On the way, Charlie and Eli meet a whole host of weird and wonderful characters. Accompanied by their horses--Nimble, Charlie's healthy horse, and Tub, Eli's slightly battered, unfortunate horse--they make their way from Oregon Territory to California. Along the way, Eli begins to re-evaluate his life, no longer happy with the contract killing and living in his brother's shadow. As Charlie schemes to make money and one day usurp the Commodore, Eli dreams of settling down with a girl and leaving the bloody frontier behind.

Eli is an interesting narrator, and as a result much more well rounded than Charlie, who is a particularly unsympathetic character. Eli's relationship with Tub, and his reluctance to let his horse go even as Tub became more and more pathetic, was a nice thread. The plot itself felt reasonably thin, and by the time the brothers got to California I didn't particularly care any more about why they were there. There is a slightly not-quite-real feel to some of the book, as if the events are being seen in a dream, broad strokes and bright colours and improbable escapes.

There are some funny moments, and for the most part I found the book enjoyable, but I also found it difficult to engage with most of the characters, and as a result it felt a bit like reading a book about a bunch of stick figures (albeit stick figures wearing cowboy hats). There was enough to keep me reading, and the unfolding frontier was fun to witness, but by the end I just wanted to move on to another book and another world.

Overall rating: 6/10

Book source: Borrowed from my dad.

Review: The Group, Mary McCarthy

The Group

Mary McCarthy

Virago, 2010 (1963)

Goodreads

The Group follows eight graduates from exclusive Vassar College as they find love and heartbreak, and choose careers and husbands against the backdrop of 1930s New York.

The Group follows the lives of a small group of college women in New York during the 1930s, beginning with the wedding of Kay Strong to a playwright, Harald Petersen, in a small impromptu ceremony that defies the traditions the other girls are used to. The book goes on to chart weddings, engagements, affairs, jobs and deaths as the decade progresses, dropping in on different members of the group at different points in time. In this way, the reader keeps up with the lives on the other women, which can be pieced together through peripheral appearances or the conversations of other characters. While Kay's story loosely structures the novel, each woman has her own thread, which is dropped and picked up again as the book progresses, as the group grows apart and come back together again, friendships changing and altering over time.

I thought The Group was excellent from start to finish. The gossiping and snide comments that go on at Kay's wedding is a great introduction to the women and the world they have been living in - social traditions, college customs (Kay, as the first girl in her class to announce her engagement, must run around the dining table at dinner), subtle class hierarchies between the women - and hints at the tone to come. The characters are well drawn, some more likable than others, but likability is not the issue here. These are often contradictory, sometimes confused women caught between tradition and modernity, expectations and reality, their own desires and the desires of others, whether husbands, lovers or parents.

The backdrop of the Depression and the emerging socialist and Communist political factions signals upheaval and change on a broader scale, but it is largely the personal upheaval and private decisions that make up the novel. It is change that Kay, Dottie, Lakey, Libby, Priss, Polly and the others are navigating as they try and forge their lives away from the halls of Vassar.

There is a definite theme of reality versus expectation, with joyous engagements leading to adultery, domestic violence and emotional abuse, grand jobs leading to drudgery and disappointment, 'nice' men who turn out to be monsters, and the men who just don't call. Motherhood is confusing and lonely rather than joyful. Though the book is rooted in the 1930s (and written in the 1960s), a lot of the issues remain recognisable. Is seeking out birth control sensible, or shameful? One of the women earns more than her husband - is she, then, emasculating him? Should new mothers be breast feeding or bottle feeding, and how should children be disciplined?

Throughout, the women remain central. Each takes a different path, and must deal with the good and the bad, often alone. This is a book about a group of friends, but not so much about friendship, other than as something that endures over time, even in absence (the final scenes are particularly touching in this regard, I thought). There are few day to day interactions between the women after they leave college, as each becomes isolated by her different circumstances and the men or careers they have chosen, away from their friends. The women gossip about each other, judging and disapproving in equal measure to the help and advice they offer, and in the end each is left to their own decisions and the consequences (or not) of their individual choices. I found The Group to be wonderfully written, sobering at times and quite melancholy in places, blackly funny in other places, and not without scenes that make you a little bit angry (to single one instance out, the scenes in the psychiatric hospital had me quite riled...). There is a certain warmth that cuts through the disillusion, and I was left wanting to know more about what happened to all the characters. Highly recommended!

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding

Chad Harbach

Fourth Estate, 2012 (2011)

Goodreads

At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets.

The Art of Fielding begins with a chance meeting between Mike Schwartz and Henry Skrimshander on a baseball field in Chicago. Henry plays for the losing side, a mediocre team from South Dakota, but Mike spots his unusual and brilliant talent as a shortstop, and engineers for Henry to enrol at Westish College, where Mike is a student, determined to nurture Henry's talent. The book begins with Henry's lonely first term, and gradually expands to include Mike, Owen (Henry's roommate), the college president, Guert Affenlight, and Guert's daughter Pella, all of whom are struggling with their own problems and trying to make sense of their lives in this tiny Wisconsin college town.

The Art of Fielding is primarily a college book, and stories of American college life rarely fail to pull me in. The mixture of small-town college life and baseball gives the book an almost mythic feel, isolating the characters from the rest of the world, both on and off the baseball field. The characters have all decamped from elsewhere - Henry from South Dakota, Mike from Chicago, Pella from a disastrous marriage in California - and settled in Westish, a place which appears to shelter them from the outside world. The inevitability of President Affenlight's secret being discovered late in the book is tempered by some degree of surprise that real life, with all its regulations and codes, has managed to intrude at all.

At the centre of the book in Henry and his rise as a major baseball talent, which later becomes marred by a near-crippling sense of self doubt. As a main character, Henry is something of an enigma. The reader rarely gets to see inside his head, and is left to read much of Henry through Mike. Furthermore, Henry is single-minded in his appreciation of baseball and his striving towards being the best shortstop he can possibly be. His whole life is structured around training and playing. Henry is difficult to fathom, and this distance becomes more pronounced as he begins to unravel, as his thought processes remain largely hidden. There is a sense of impending disaster, and yet nothing in the form of reassurance to counteract it.

The other characters offer more insight, particularly Mike and Pella. While Mike's life is gradually beginning to fall apart, Pella's is starting to be put back together. Pella's relationship with her father underpins much of the book, as the two learn to live with each other, or not, again. Though romantic relationships do develop in the book, the relationship between Pella and Guert, and more so Henry and Mike, form the nucleus of the novel, and it was interesting to see these dynamics played out.

While I have always had a fascination with baseball, and have seen a handful of live games when living in the U.S., I was a little bit concerned that the book would be heavy on games and terms that I couldn't understand. I found it reasonably easy to follow what was going on, however, and though there are a lot of games played in the book, I didn't find that it dominated to an irritating degree.

Though it was difficult to get a handle on Henry, I liked him as a character and was willing him to succeed the whole way through the book. I oscillated in the second half of the book between two likely endings, and which one I would prefer, but in the end it turned out a little differently to my expectations. Overall the book has quite a melancholy tone, and is reflective rather than action-packed, but I enjoyed the tone and the pace, and it fit well with the themes of discovery and recovery that are woven through the text. The unlikely band of characters at the centre of The Art of Fielding were all engaging and felt genuine enough that I cared what happened to them at the end. Highly recommended.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Book source: Received as a gift from my dad.