Reading Matters

'Journey into the Past' by Stefan Zweig

Fiction - paperback; Pushkin Press; 124 pages; 2009. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell.

A few days ago Gav from Next Read asked a pertinent question: What have you read that you wouldn’t if it wasn’t for a blog? I'll admit I was stumped, because even though I know I have picked up loads of recommendations from fellow book bloggers over the years, nothing jumped immediately to mind. But since then I can quite happily say, Stefan Zweig.

Austrian-born Mr Zweig, who committed suicide in 1942, is one of those authors that crops up on book blogs all the time. I've seen countless reviews of his posthumously published novel The Post Office Girl and several references to his novella Chess, also published after his death. And only last week John Self reviewed Zweig's Amok & other stories which prompted me to confess that I was a Zweig virgin. When I asked which book I should try first, John suggested Chess because "it shows him in full maturity as a writer", but as it turned out it was Journey into the Past that caught my eye for no other reason than it was the only Zweig book on Foyles' shelves when I visited on Friday afternoon. (Interestingly enough, Amazon claim that this book isn't published until Tuesday, although it seems readily available from the Pushkin Press website.)

Journey into the Past is a quick read coming in at just over 100 pages but it's the kind of story that lingers and I can see how it would be possible to catch the Zweig bug and want to read more of his work. This one has only just been translated into English, although it was published in German as Widerstand der Wirklichkeit (Resistance to Reality) in 1976 from a manuscript discovered 30 years after his death. But, as the translator Anthea Bell tells us in her Afterword, parts of it had been reproduced as early as 1929 in Vienna under the title Fragment of a Novella in an anthology of works by the Austrian National Association of Creative Artists. Even so, this makes it his final novella (unless other discoveries lie in wait) and for that reason you would expect it to be an accomplished piece of writing.

Indeed it is. It's also very moving and is brim full of lovelorn angst, a perfectly delicious read that, in less masterful hands, may have come across as sentimental old claptrap. What we have is a love story between two opposites -- an impoverished but incredibly intelligent young doctor, and a slightly older woman already married to a rich man -- whose affair is never fully consummated before Ludwig is sent away and the First World War ruins his plans to return.

But the book starts where it ends: with Ludwig returning to Germany after an absence of nine years to see whether the woman he so passionately loved has waited for him as she once promised.

I'm not going to spoil the ending and tell you what happens, but it's a near-perfect examination of how we glorify the past and cling onto the flimsiest of memories to move into the future. Or, as the blurb on the back of my book so aptly puts it, Journey into the Past "is a poignant examination of the angst of nostalgia and the fragility of love". It's also superbly written and filled with the kind of gentle nuances other novelists would struggle to emulate.

I do, however, have one minor quibble, but it is not to do with the author or his writing. It's to do with cost. This is a very slim volume but it retails for full whack, which is currently £7.99. Even though there's some added value in the form of a very interesting foreword by Paul Bailey (whoever he might be; we're not told) and an equally interesting afterword by Anthea Bell it still feels like a lot of money for not much paper. I could see how some readers might be put off when they could buy a 500-pager for the same price...

'The Chrysalids' by John Wyndham

  Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 187 pages; 2000.

The late John Wyndham is probably best known for his science fiction classic The Day of the Triffids, a post apocalyptic novel in which the world gets overtaken by carnivorous three-legged plants. But it's The Chrysalids, published four years later, in 1955, which most Wyndham fans say is his best.

I read all his major novels (there are seven) when I was in my teens and loved them with a kind of evangelical devotion, but how would this one stack up more than 20 years later?

Strangely enough I had forgotten so much of the detail of The Chrysalids I began to wonder whether I'd actually read it before. It felt very fresh, very new and, surprisingly, very modern.

The setting is typical Wyndham fare: a post-apocalyptic world a few thousands years in the future. But in this case society has regressed to the point of living a rather primitive frontier-like existence reminiscent of 18th century pastoral America. There is no technology here, no cars, no electricity. The houses are basic, constructed of wood with thatched roofs and whitewashed walls, and everyone works hard to provide a stable supply of stock and crops.

But all is not as it seems. This is a society obsessed with fundamental Christianity to the point where anyone not born in the true Image of God is regarded as a blasphemy to be dispatched at birth or condemned to live in the Fringes, a wild untamed area where other rejected "humans" roam. Even the crops are carefully monitored to ensure they do not deviate from the norm; whole fields are burnt if the plants do not look right. And if anyone has any doubts as to whether a particular plant or human is abnormal, there's an inspector to play judge, jury and executioner.

The story is narrated by David, the 10-year-old son of the local religious leader, who is indoctrinated to "watch thou for the mutant!" and "keep pure the stock of the lord" amongst others. But when David befriends Sophie, a girl hiding the fact that she has six toes on each foot, he begins to question his religious upbringing.

Later, when David realises that he has a rare talent for telepathic communication with his half-cousin Rosalind and several other children, he realises that perhaps he, too, is a deviant, and is careful to hide his ability. This group manages to avoid exposure for several years, but then two factors threaten to "out" them: one of the group marries a normal person, and David's baby sister, Petra, discovers that her telepathic ability is so strong that she can communicate with a woman from a more technologically advanced society.

I don't want to provide any plot spoilers, so I'll refrain from telling you any more about the narrative, but it's an exciting one, a kind of weird blend between boy's own adventure story and literary thriller.

Despite being written more than 50 years ago the story seems incredibly relevant to our modern-day obsession with appearance and genetic modification, although, as John Harrison points out in the introduction to this edition, it's clearly a novel of the 1950s, when "molecular biologists were unwinding the DNA spiral; the new science of radio astronomy had filled the sky with invisible objects; quantum physicists were able to reveal that God does, after all, play dice with the universe" and everyone was living in the shadow of the hydrogen bomb.

The Chrysalids is a wonderful, intelligent read, and I'm glad I took the time to reacquaint myself with it. If you've not read any Wyndham before then this is the place to start...

'Guardian Work' by Ian Carpenter

Humour - paperback; Beautiful Books; 222 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's always nice to try something a little left-of-field when you're between novels and not sure what to read next, a "palette cleanser" if you will.

Guardian Work by Ian Carpenter popped through the post yesterday courtesy of the publisher and while it's not something I would normally rush out and buy, I was intrigued by the premise -- an Essex-based property manager decides to apply for every job listed in one issue of the Guardian newspaper to see what might arise. Earlier today I thought I'd read a chapter or two before getting on with other bits and pieces, and before I knew it a couple of hours had flown by and I'd finished the entire book! Yes, it's a quick and easy read, but it's also a very funny one.

Apparently Ian's "project"  was recounted via his blog over the six-month period that it took him to apply for all the jobs listed in the September 29, 2007 issue of the Guardian. Along the way he visited a Swiss banker who wanted to employ his parent's cat; got mired in an endless cycle of "telephone tennis" with a firm looking to recruit an operations manager; was invited to take part in a money laundering scheme fronted by a chap supposedly running an art gallery; and had a run in with a firm operating a covert operation which warned him not to pass on any information to anyone outside the enforcement community. (His reply, to the latter, was hilarious: "I withdraw my application for your job. It all sounds a bit cloak and dagger to me.")

He also applied for various high-profile positions that were not advertised in the newspaper, such as the manager of the English football team and head of the Liberal Democrats.

To be perfectly frank, the book doesn't break any new ground, because we've seen this "trick" done before. In fact, I think it's probably Robin Cooper's fault, because it was his The Time Waster Letters, published in 2004, which ushered in a whole new genre of books based on the kooky correspondence between bored men and officialdom.

But Guardian Work is still a rather enjoyable romp that had me tittering in quite a few places, especially as I have been on the receiving end of some questionable job applications in the past. I'm now beginning to wonder if the would-be reporter whose cover letter informed me she had the "ability to wake up beautiful every morning" wasn't winding me up for the purposes of writing a book like this one!

'Hot House Flower' by Margot Berwin

Fiction - paperback; Hutchinson; 288 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Having read Susan Orlean's classic non-fiction title, The Orchid Thief, and Eric Hansen's similarly acclaimed Orchid Fever, I had high hopes that this fictionalised account of a woman hunting for rare plants in the tropics of Mexico would be something I'd really enjoy. And while it ticked all the botanical boxes, I'm afraid Hot House Flower was slightly too girlie for me. In fact, the cover image and the cursive font should probably have served as a big warning: this is chick lit and I should read at my peril!

Now, don't get me wrong. I have no objection to chick lit. If it gets people reading and makes people excited about books, then it can only be a good thing. But it's not a genre I enjoy, for a whole host of reasons. And while Hot House Flower may dish up something slightly more exotic than a girl meets boy romance, when you get right down to it, it is essentially a cosy story about a 32-year-old divorcee looking to find a new man.

Bearing that in mind, it is imminently readable, and I consumed it in two sittings, so eager was I to follow Lila Nova's journey from high-flying advertising executive in Manhattan to her reinvention as a flower hunter in the luscious rainforest of the Yucatan peninsula.

The first-person narrative is easy to follow and there's plenty of adventure and thrills and spills to keep you entertained, along with a dash of romance and a bit of magic and witchcraft thrown in for good measure. It's a fun, light-hearted read and definitely won't sap the brain power.

However, the magic realism, highly reminiscent of Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells, means you need to suspend belief for much of the story, but especially the latter-third which involves Huichol shamans and herbalists working their supernatural powers. It's fascinating, if slightly too far-fetched for my liking, but if you're looking for some sheer escapism this summer, Hot House Flower will fit the bill perfectly.

'All Names Have Been Changed' by Claire Kilroy

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 288 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Claire Kilroy is a young Irish writer whose debut novel, All Summer, published in 2003, garnered much critical acclaim and earned her the 2004 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. It was also shortlisted for the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award.

Her second novel Tenderwire (2006), a literary thriller set in New York, was shortlisted for the 2007 Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year but lost out to Patrick McCabe's Winterwood.  I read it last August and thought it was such an intelligent page-turner I was eager to read more of her work. So when I found out there was a new one on the way I asked Faber and Faber if they'd be kind enough to send me a proof copy, and they obliged.

Sadly, I found it very difficult to "get into" All Names Have Been Changed and I put it aside, hoping I might find it more rewarding if I picked it up at another time. And so it lay abandoned on my bedside table for almost two months, until I picked it up last night to give it another try. This time the book seemed more readable and I eagerly made my way through the remaining 100 or so pages, but ultimately I found it disappointing in comparison to Tenderwire.

The book is set in 1980s Dublin and is about a group of creative writing students at Trinity College who become dangerously obsessed with their tutor, the world-famous PJ Glynn. It is narrated by Declan, the only male student in the class of five, but not much seems to happen and before long, as harsh as this will sound, the reader begins to wonder whether there is any point in ploughing on.

Because this is a book about group dynamics and personalities, it seems odd that none of the characters, bar Glynn, a stereotypical drunk Irishman, and Declan, the impoverished student, are particularly memorable. Perhaps it was just me, but the others -- Antonia, Aisling, Faye and Guinevere -- seemed indistinguishable from each other, so I could never quite remember which one was the mature student, which one was the Goth and which one was rumoured to be abused by her husband. This seems a fundamental flaw given this is essentially a story about writing.

But, in a way, it is this examination of what it is to be a writer that makes All Names Have Been Changed such an interesting read. If you have ever participated in a writing class or idolised a particular author, then much of the content will resonate.

There's a lot of literary in-jokes here, too, and probably far too many of them went over my head, but it becomes apparent as the story moves on that the participants in the group find themselves acting out roles in a novel. Indeed, at one point, Declan realises that he is no longer aping Glynn but the characters in Glynn's books.

And Kilroy takes it further by giving each chapter a title taken from a real-life Irish book or song -- for example, I don't like Mondays; The Book of Evidence; The pipes, the pipes are calling; and Tarry Glynn -- half the fun of which is identifying their source.

Such a gloomy, sombre novel -- remember, this is set during a time when the length of Dublin's dole queues were notorious and the city was in the grip of a heroin epidemic -- begs for this light relief, but I'm not sure the dark humour truly works.

While Kilroy's prose cannot be faulted (the oft-used phrase "beautifully written" has never been more apt) and the tone is measured and the atmosphere suitably claustrophobic, it feels as if something is missing. I suspect it might be a tighter plot, because even as a character-driven novel I don't think All Names Have Been Changed quite pulls it off. You might beg to differ.

The 'joy' of comments

Does anyone else get crappy comments on old posts?

Back in 2006 I reviewed Bryce Courtenay's Jessica. I thought the book was poorly written and said as much in my review.

For some reason that particular review is one of the most visited posts on this blog. Not all visitors to the post leave a comment, but those that do seem to think the book is the best thing they have ever read. I can't quibble with that, because we all have different tastes and the world would be a very dull place if we all agreed with one another.

But sometimes the comments grate and I wonder if I should delete them. Here's a prime example, unedited, by someone calling herself "Nicole":

Quite frankly i disagree with your "smack" talk about this book. If your looking for "explanations" and "historical footnotes" how about you look them up yourself. This book is clearly not written for just these things it is to inspire and it has a purpose to reach into the hearts and minds of people. personally i think you need to get a grip because I read this book when i was 15years old and I know that even now at 18 years old i would read it all over again. if(how bout you edit that for me..) you wish to talk so badly of it then why did you keep reading it until you finished the book if you disliked it that much. Have respect for the author and if your so "perfect" then why don't you write a story yourself! I bet it'd be hard to be so accomplished such as Bryce Courtenay. Save your negativity for yourself noone wants to hear it. If your lifes so bad that you got to be a downer about a marvellous book then I think you have some serious issues and need to consider therapy. although your so negative and judgemental you'd probably think the therapist needs the therapy. you'd probably even analyse how they do the job. I pity you negative attitude. How about you take you sadistic reviews someplace else!!!!!

In the end I decided to leave the comment for comic value alone. And I just love how she tells me to take my "sadistic reviews someplace else!!!!!" Apparently she hasn't cottoned on to the fact that this is MY blog and I can write whatever I want to on it.

In the end I confess that this bad-mannered comment irritated me so much I sent a personal reply to "Nicole" suggesting she might want to learn some manners; strangely enough she never answered back.

'Once Upon A Time in England' by Helen Walsh

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 360 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

It's difficult to review Once Upon a Time in England -- Helen Walsh's second novel -- without giving away any of the plot. The beauty of reading it is letting the tale wash over you; I came to it "blind" and did not know what to expect, and I rather suspect this lack of knowledge about the storyline helped me to enjoy it hugely. For that reason, please excuse the scant detail I will provide here.

Essentially, the story is a family drama. It spans two decades and is set in England's industrial North -- Warrington, Cheshire, to be precise.

Robbie Fitzgerald is a young red-headed factory worker who has his sights set on a career as a cabaret-singer-come-pop star. But just when his first lucky break arrives -- a music producer discovers him and promises all kinds of work, including a possible tour with Shirley Bassey -- things go pear-shaped. There's been a break-in at his house, and his wife, a pretty immigrant nurse from Kuala Lumpur, home alone with their young son, Vincent, has been man-handled by the balaclava-wearing intruder. The shock precipitates her into an early labour with their second child, a girl, Ellie.

This single evening sets the scene for the rest of Robbie and Susheela's lives together, a kind of desperate struggle to make do with their lot, without ever really striving to break out of their cycle of domestic drudgery. Their initial fairytale romance becomes tarnished, first, by the local community's inability to accept their mixed marriage, and second, by Susheela's own creeping doubts that she should perhaps set Robbie free and start afresh. Her gradual slide into depression and her constant feelings of cultural dislocation only confuses her husband further.

What hurt most was the gradual grinding down of any magic in their lives until what remained was drudgery, duty and work, that killing routine of early start, long days at the conveyor belt and deadly nothingness at home. He felt for her, he wanted to make it go away. But she was doing it to herself -- the grudging, laboured way she toiled through motherhood, seldom smiling, rarely even seeing her children. Truly she was a shadow of the girl he'd fallen for.

The novel is divided into three parts -- 1975, 1981 and 1989 -- all pivotal points in the family's timeline. It is so well written that you begin to feel as if you are living alongside Robbie, Shusheela, Vincent and Ellie, as they stumble their way through their own small but complicated lives. Each character is believable and painfully human, right down to their individual inability to rise above their personal circumstances.

This is a book that deals with big themes -- racism, poverty, drugs, crime, peer pressure, to name but a few -- but in a very human way. It never feels cliched and is never manipulative. It is, however, emotionally frustrating, because these characters never seem to want to help themselves. And it's not as if they don't have the skills or talent to do so -- Robbie has an amazing voice, Susheela is a dedicated nurse, Vincent shows promise as a writer and Ellie wins a scholarship to a private school -- but they all seem to make bad choices, one after the other, to the point that you begin to wonder whether perhaps they deserve all the bad things that happen to them.

Once Upon a Time in England isn't a particularly cheery read, but it's packed with raw emotion and it would be a hard-hearted person indeed who didn't find themselves keeping their fingers crossed that the Fitzgeralds might just survive the 1970s and 1980s unscathed. I thought this was a wonderful easy-to-read book that packs a painful, and surprising, punch right at the very end. I don't want to damn it with faint praise, but I do think it would make an excellent book group choice because there's so much in it worthy of discussion.

My lovely haul

This haul, acquired in the past month, is made up of books given to me as gifts, books bought with my own hard-earned cash and books sent to me gratis for reviewing purposes. Thirteen of them arrived in the post yesterday morning alone!

Here's what's in the pile:

'Selling Light' by Effie Gray

Fiction - paperback; Roast Books; 112 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Effie Gray's Selling Light is part of a new series of novellas published by London-based indie publishing house Roast Books. The books are billed as "great little reads" that can be easily consumed within "a long lunch hour or a single train journey".

This is an attractive concept, especially for those bibliophiles who don't want to lug around heavy paperbacks but need to be accompanied by a book at all times. Although not quite compact enough to fit in your back pocket, they're light enough to carry in a bag -- that's if you're brave enough to risk having them battered and scuffed, because these are handsome-looking volumes that look almost too good to read.

In much the same way as Persephone Books publishes all its books in attractive dovegrey covers with pretty endpapers, Roast Books has opted for highly textured cream covers with illustrations by Kenneth Andersson. They look very tasty indeed.

 

And the content is equally attractive if Selling Light is anything to go by. This is a gorgeous little tale about two loners who find themselves forging a fragile, hesitant friendship by the coast: Briege, is a young university student studying crabs, and George is an older man still grieving over the death of his wife eight years earlier. Both are living in caravans when Briege invites George on a crab-hunting expedition -- and it is here that you get the sense that a little romance could develop if only the both of them were trusting enough to take it a step further.

But before they can get their acts together, their peace is shattered by the arrival of Peter Cooper, a young upstart, who throws a party in the nearby lighthouse and begins making plans to turn it into a "small deluxe guesthouse which he can manage from the city". Meanwhile his "girlfriend" Amanda, who has a "parasitic attachment to others" realises that she "needs a new host" and begins casting around for one...

It's a fascinating and beautifully told tale, one that lives up to Roast Books' promise of delivering quality short works of fiction that are "easily digestible, instantly gratifying and, of course, extremely tasty little reads". I'm very much looking forward to reading the others in the series.

The winner of 'In the Wake of the Boatman' is...

Thanks to everyone who threw their names in the hat for my competition to win a (used) copy of Jonathon Scott Fuqua's novel In the Wake of the Boatman.

There were some interesting nominations for books that deserve a wider audience, and at some point I'll amalgamate them into a list for everyone to see.

In the meantime, it's on with choosing a winner. As per usual I used an online random number generator, plugged in the numbers and this is what it came up with:

That means the fourth person to leave a comment on the post, gets the book. So, congratulations to Amelia of Off the Mark and Roaming. I'll be in touch shortly to find out your postal address.

The 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner announced

The winner of the €100,000 prize is Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas.

The official press release is here.

Who will win the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award?

Tomorrow the winner of the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award will be announced.

The extensive long list has been whittled down to just 8 titles.

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
2. Ravel by Jean Echenoz
3. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
4. The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland
5. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen
6. The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
7. Animal's People by Indra Sinha
8. Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas

Having only read one of these titles (I've got two others in the reading queue), I don't think I'm in much of a position to judge who's likely to walk off with the €100,000 prize. @Sinead Gleeson, who has read them all, seems to think Junot Díaz will win it and if I was to put my money on any book it would probably be this one too.

Who do you think will win the prize?

Addicted to books

Did you see this post on the Guardian books blog?

Yes, my secret's out: my name is Kim and I am a bookaholic!

Book giveaway: Win a copy of 'In the Wake of the Boatman'

Like most of you, I read an awful lot of books over the course of a year. My reading habits tend towards the literary, but I also enjoy general fiction, crime novels and the odd non-fiction title. I'm obsessed with Irish novels and I love to read books that tell stories completely different to my own life. Jonathon Scott Fuqua's novel In the Wake of the Boatman fits into the latter category.

When the publisher offered me a review copy way back in February, my initial reaction was to turn it down. But I changed my mind on the basis it was a small press, and small presses need all the publicity they can get -- and who knows, maybe the book would be a good read?

Well, that was the understatement of the year. In the Wake of the Boatman (which I reviewed here) is a brilliant read and I honestly think it deserves a much wider audience. Which is why I've decided to pass my copy onto one lucky reader.

Note that the book has few dog-eared pages where I shamelessly turned down the corners to mark passages I wanted to recall in my review. So if you're expecting a pristine copy, perhaps you might want to go out and buy your own (it's available via Amazon or you can order direct from the publisher), but if you don't mind reading a slightly used edition then please enter your name below, telling me the name of a book YOU think deserves a wider audience.

I will close the comments at 10am GMT on Saturday, June 13. I'll then choose the winner using an online random number generator (or some such).

The competition is open to anyone, regardless of where you live, but you can only enter once. Good luck.

'The Journalist and the Murderer' by Janet Malcolm

Non-fiction - paperback; Granta Books; 163 pages; 2004.

Janet Malcolm's The Journalist and the Murderer famously caused an outcry within the media when it was first published as a two-part article in The New Yorker in 1989. Its oft-quoted opening sentence -- "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible" -- seemed to lay down the gauntlet, calling the ethics of journalism into question.

But Malcolm is a journalist herself and so the book must not be condemned on the basis of this first line, nor should it be viewed as summing up the author's views. Indeed, it becomes clear upon reading The Journalist and the Murderer that Malcolm has mixed views about her profession, which I'm sure is true of most journalists today, myself included.

What this book really examines is the relationship between journalists and sources in the context of non-fiction books and the difficulties which face both parties. While the journalist must remain impartial in order to render the truth, he must do whatever he can to convince his subject to be frank and open with him. Meanwhile, the source must come to trust the journalist enough to share his or her most intimate secrets. Such unspoken rules are fraught with difficulty, because what happens if the journalist writes something that upsets the source but which he knows is correct and truthful? Most journalists would say that they are only doing their job - and that's the view I take, too.

But what if the situation was slightly more complicated, and the journalist agreed to write a book about the source and was given unparalleled access to him and his closest family, friends and colleagues? The dynamic might change, a close friendship might result, but surely the journalist still has a job to do and is honour-bound to remain objective and to write events as he sees them? After all he's not in the business of writing flattering, gratifying portraits (unless, of course, that's the "truth"), because he's not a publicist but a journalist.

Tricky, isn't it? And even more so if the source doesn't quite understand the rules of the game and mistakes the journalist's so-called friendship for a genuine intimacy, when it's essentially a means to an end: the journalist has wooed the source in order to extract information. Interestingly, Malcolm calls sources "victims" but she also points out that far too many "victims" are willing ones.

Something seems to happen to people when they meet a journalist, and what happens is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. One would think that extreme wariness and caution would be the order of the day, but in fact childish trust and impetuosity are far more common. The journalistic encounter seems to have the same negative effect on a subject as the psychoanalytic encounter. The subject becomes a kind of child of the writer, regarding him as a permissive, all-accepting, all-forgiving mother, and expecting that the book will be written by her. Of course the book is written by the strict, all-noticing, unforgiving father.

Malcolm really gets to the heart of this very thorny issue by examining the famous lawsuit between a convicted murderer, Jeffrey MacDonald, and a journalist, Joe McGinness, who wrote about the crime. 

MacDonald, a United States Army doctor, was accused of murdering his pregnant wife and their two infant daughters in 1970. Before the case had come to trial, McGinness, a hugely successful non-fiction writer, had secured MacDonald's co-operation in turning his story into a book on the condition that he would have complete editorial freedom. He also made arrangements to sit in on the trial, was given full access to McDonald's legal team and even lived with defense counsel and the accused during proceedings.

The book was published under the title Fatal Vision in 1983 (admittedly I read it when I was in my late teens) and turned into a TV mini-series starring Karl Malden in 1984 (I think I probably watched that too, but I couldn't be sure). MacDonald's misguided belief that the book would exonerate him in the eyes of the public did not come to pass. Instead, Fatal Vision states that MacDonald's guilty verdict is the correct outcome, describing him as a "womaniser" and "pathological narcissist". It even goes so far as to purport a motive for the crime: MacDonald killed his family in a fit of psychotic rage caused by amphetamine use.

A writ claiming McGinness had breached his contract was duly served, and it is this case, later settled out of court following a mistrial, which Malcolm dissects using actual court transcripts and her own behind-the-scenes interviews in The Journalist and The Murderer. It is absolutely fascinating reading, if only to see the duplicit lengths that a journalist will go to to get his story. And it would seem that the "morally indefensible" act to which she refers in her opening sentence is not about journalism per se but to McGinness's betrayal of his source: pretending that he believed MacDonald was innocent long after he became convinced of his guilt.

'In the Wake of the Boatman' by Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Fiction - hardcover; Bancroft Press; 308 pages; 2008. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The tension between fathers and sons is a much-explored theme in literary fiction, but few present such a tangled, complicated, emotionally crippled relationship as the one depicted in Jonathon Scott Fuqua's In The Wake of the Boatman.

From the very first page it's clear that the relationship between Carl Hatcher Steward and his son, Puttnam Douglas, is going to be a lifelong problematic one. It's 1942, the USA is in the throes of a world war, and Puttnam has just been born.

Days later Helen and the newborn finally arrived home, yet Carl's anxieties did not abate. Alone in the gray living room of their clapboard rental, their four-year-old daughter asleep in bed, Carl's thoughts crudely took him off guard. On this oppressive Norfolk evening, the notion came to him so calmly it almost made sense. He should crack his little boy's neck as gently as possible. It would be like saving two lives.

This is an important glimpse inside Carl's dark heart. He's a damaged man who seems unable to love his son. Why? Because he's ashamed that he has brought a child into the world at a time when "another mouth to feed would not help the war effort" and humiliated because his dodgy knee means he cannot join the Army.

By the time VE Day arrives, three years later, Carl's hardness has not thawed: he finds himself in tears because it suddenly dawns on him that he does not know how to give his son a hug.

It seemed a completely different act from hugging his wife or daughter. He had gone over to his son with intentions of hugging him, but in the end, hadn't been able to. Suddenly he felt old, worn, and permanently immovable. He was in a groove too deep to change. 'Jesus,' he cried softly to himself. He grasped his nose with his fingers and held his breath.

And yet, despite this acknowledgment of his emotional failings, Carl seems unable to do anything about it. Some 15 years later, as he drives his son to college, it's obvious that he blames Putt for his own failings. "I've given you a toughness that will carry you through a lifetime unscathed. I've given you everything I could," he tells him, before adding: "You've never tried very hard to please me. You've made it impossible for me to really love you."

'You're a curse. You're a curse to your mother and me. What have I done to deserve this kind of curse?'
He stared at Putt, as if his son, at that moment, had been floating a few feet about the Ford's bench seat. 'I don't understand you. You won't let me understand you.'
Putt glowered at his father. 'You think it's just me? That I'm not allowing you to understand me?' He laughed.
'It's not me,' Carl said, looking ahead at the road, at the hills that were growing longer.
'You think it's me,' Puttnam said again. 'Nothing's your fault?'
'Yep.'

Any wonder, then, that Putt cuts all ties with his father? Their estrangement serves to fuel Putt's desire to be successful, and he graduates, becomes an infantryman in the United States Army and later a decorated hero in the Vietnam War.  All the while he keeps in touch with his older sister, Mary, a strikingly beautiful woman who marries a man with more than a passing resemblance to Carl, and his affectionate if slightly scatty mother (interestingly, she calls him "Mama's boy").

On the surface Putt is a strong, attractive man, but underneath he's scrabbling to come to terms with a homosexual dalliance in college and a penchant for cross-dressing. These two secrets, if exposed, will destroy him and so, the anxiety, the disgust and the shame of it, build and build. It is only when his aged father falls ill that he must face the truth about himself, whatever the consequences.

If this sounds like a dark, complicated tale, then you'd be right. But there's something quite beautiful and devastating about this book, which never resorts to melodrama to convey the tortured, ambiguous nature of Carl and Putt's relationship, nor Putt's confused sexuality.

The story is told in the third person -- mainly from Putt's point-of-view -- and moves so quickly that time seems distorted. You can turn a page and suddenly find the narrative has moved ahead by years without any real explanation of what's happened in between. But this is not a quibble. I like Scott Fuqua's tendency to let Putt's secrets remain just that. While we come to learn that Putt is confused by his sexuality and ashamed of his desire to wear women's clothes behind closed doors, these are not laboured and remain hazy, sketchy events, which make them all the more mysterious and intriguing.

By contrast, the formative event in his young life -- when he accidentally puts a boy's eye out with a rock at a local swimming pool when he was just six years old -- is mentioned many times, I think because it symbolises Putt's confused feelings over his masculinity: he's proud of this one act that proves he can stand up for himself, and yet he's also ashamed of the violence of it.

In the Wake of the Boatman -- the title refers to Carl, the backyard boatman, who builds his own craft that sink upon launch -- is the kind of book I did not expect to like. But I found it totally absorbing, incredibly realistic and emotionally hard-hitting. I read it more than six weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it, which may partly explain why this review has been such a long time coming.

As an aside, I have to say the names of the characters in this book are amongst some of the weirdest I've ever come across. If Puttnam wasn't unusual enough, how about these: Milton Pilterpuss, Bertrand Capote, Percy Dishbrower and Thane Forgit. They almost sound computer-generated.

Calling all London bloggers. Want to join our book group?

A few weeks back Simon of Savidge Reads wrote a post about book groups and floated the idea of starting one for London-based bloggers.

I'm not much of a joiner and usually like to keep myself to myself, but something about Simon's post resonated, because how cool would it be to meet up with a group of like-minded individuals on a monthly basis to discuss a book we'd just read? I'd run my own online book group for a couple of years, but it felt a bit too much like homework and wound it up at the end of 2007.

But life's a bit more normal these days and I think I could handle a monthly "assignment" as long as the discussion was relaxed, friendly and could be done over a cuppa (or something stronger).

So, to cut a long story short, I emailed Simon and over the course of the past three weeks or so we've exchanged numerous emails about how we could get a group up and running in central London.
At this stage, we figure that we will meet monthly, probably on a Thursday evening, and that each member of the group will get a turn at choosing what we read. It's not going to be a bossy or pretentious group; indeed, I'm kind of hoping it might have the flavour of both of our blogs, a kind of friendly, chatty place where everyone will be made very welcome.

So, if you live in London and fancy coming along to our first soirée or even if you don't live in London but think this might give you an incentive to visit, then get in touch with either Simon or myself and we can give you a few more details. Note, you don't have to have a blog to join and the first "session" will simply be a getting-to-know-you meeting. I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone interested in coming along...

Books shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1969-2008

Now that the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction is over all attention will turn to the 40th Man Booker Prize, although the longlist won't be announced until early August and the shortlist in September. Time, then, to have a look at all the books that have made the shortlist since the prize's inception in 1969.

I have bolded up those I have read; hyperlinks take you to my reviews published on this site.

Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 winner announced

The £30,000 prize goes to Marilynne Robinson for Home.

Guess I better extract my copy from the pile and read it, eh?

Admittedly, I am disappointed that Samantha Harvey didn't win it for The Wilderness, but you can't have everything.

More bookish bits

• The Art of Manliness, a website that "features articles on helping men be better husbands, better fathers, and better men", has published a list of 100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library. [Thanks to @HenryHolt for the tip-off.]

• The New Yorker has a cool online bookclub. The current book under discussion: Wendell Steavenson's The Weight of a Mustard Seed. Other book selections have included Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varansi (which I have in my reading queue), George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road.

• Congratulations to Canongate, which has been named publisher of the year. Well deserved, I say, not the least because this independent publisher was one of the first to recognise the role us book bloggers in the UK play in alerting readers to great books.

• If you're obsessed by London literature, keep your eye out for a new anthology featuring more than 60 writers, including Will Self, Monica Ali, Alan Bennett and Beryl Bainbridge, called city-lit London. The book, which is published by Oxygen Books, will be launched later this month. [Thanks to @thecitylitcafe for the tip-off.]

• George Orwell fans who love the theatre, you're in for a treat. Trafalgar Studios, here in London, is staging Orwell: A Celebration between 8 June - 4 July. It sounds like a weird and wonderful tribute to an amazing writer: I've already booked my tickets. For more information, check out the official site.

• Collect book lists and like book challenges? Then here's the mother of all book lists: Arukiyomi's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. The best thing is that it comes in the form of an Excel spreadsheet that you can download free of charge. It includes Wikipedia/Google Books hyperlinks and a totals sheet so you can tally up all the ones you have read! Brilliant.