Reading Matters

Season's greetings

Well, that's it for me for 2009. I'm taking a small blogging break in order to recharge the batteries.

Thanks for all your support and lovely comments over the past 12 months. I've had a wonderful book-filled year: I've read some amazing novels, both new and old; discovered a couple of new independent book stores; made some new book-blogging friends (and even met some of you in the flesh); joined a book group (hello Riverside Readers!); discovered some wonderful new blogs; and attended one or two literary events. I'm looking forward to doing it all again in 2010.

In the meantime, I'd like to wish you and yours a wonderful festive season and hope that your New Year is a bookish one! See you back here in mid-January for another busy year of book reviews and book chat.

My parting gift is an acoustic version of a classic Christmas song, Fairytale of New York, performed by Florence and the Machine, and Billy Bragg live in session for BBC Radio 1. Enjoy!

Top 10s: The best reads of 2009

As we get ready to toast the turn of the decade it's time for me to name the best novels I read in 2009. All of them garnered five-stars when I reviewed them over the course of the year. My top 10 fiction reads are as follows (in alphabetical order by book title):

'A Far Cry From Kensington' by Muriel Spark (first published in 1988)
"To say I was utterly charmed by it would probably be an understatement. This is a deliciously enjoyable story that is so perfectly constructed it's almost impossible to find fault with it -- on any level. The prose is simple, the characters believable and the plot expertly drawn, so that you're never quite sure where it's going to take you and then feel overwhelmingly satisfied when you arrive at its destination."

'A Woman of My Age' by Nina Bawden (1967)
"A Woman of My Age is definitely a product of its times, when women married young and were expected to stay at home and raise a family. But in Elizabeth Jourdelay, Bawden has created a headstrong and independent character who rails against society's 'rules' and constraints."

'Eight Months on Ghazzah Street' by Hilary Mantel (1998)
"Eight Months on Ghazzah Street is a psychological thriller of the finest order. It reads like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but because Frances is an intelligent worldly wise woman, you know that her fears aren't fickle. Mantel builds up the tension slowly but surely, revealing Frances' increasing sense of foreboding through diary entries that are interspersed throughout the third-person narrative."

'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes (1966)
"Daniel Key's Flowers for Algernon is a very special science fiction novel that reveals much about the human condition and the ways in which we relate to others. It touches on many issues including the way we treat the mentally handicapped, the ethics of scientific experimentation on animals (and humans), our desire to be 'normal', the differences between IQ and EQ, and the ways in which our childhood experiences impact on our adult lives."

'The Merry-Go-Roun-in the Sea' by Randolph Stow (1965)
"Essentially the book, which was first written in 1965, is a coming-of-age story. It is set in Geraldton, Western Australia, where the author, who now lives in England, was born. Although my Penguin Modern Classics edition claims it is "not a self portrait" there's no mistaking The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea's semi-autobiographical roots. It has a truly authentic feel for the time and the place, and it's easy to find yourself entirely immersed in this world, smelling the eucalyptus wafting on the breeze and feeling the hot sand of the beach between your toes."

'Nineteen Eighty-Four' by George Orwell (1949)
"The thing that struck me most was how much of this futuristic novel was deeply rooted in the time in which Orwell wrote it. There are echoes of war-torn London throughout this book [...] Obviously there's a lot of stuff that feels incredibly prescient today: the so-called War on Terror and its resultant erosion of civil liberties; the increasing reliance on media spin, particularly by government agencies; and the ever-present CCTV surveillance, especially here in the UK."

'Once & Then' by Morris Gleitzman (2009)
"Once & Then is a powerful story about the strength and resilience of the human spirit. It's about courage and hope, and surviving against the odds. And while it tackles one of the darkest times in 20th century history, Gleitzman does it sensitively without losing any of the important detail. There's plenty of death here, and cruelty, but it's not sensationalist or gratuitous. 'This story is my imagination trying to grasp the unimaginable,' he writes in his afterward. I think he's achieved it."

'Pretty Monsters' by Kelly Link (2009)
"There are nine stories here, some of which have been published elsewhere in the past, and each one presents an intoxicating, hugely original world [...] I've never read such a wacky collection of stories that gripped me, held me in their sway and slightly altered my perception of the universe when I came to each stunning conclusion. Where has Kelly Link been hiding all my life? She's bloody brilliant."

'The Shiralee' by D'Arcy Niland (1955)
"The book has a big heart. It's funny in places and sad in others. It's occasionally tender, occasionally brutal. It's humble, knowing and wise. Sometimes it makes you feel ashamed to be human, at other times it makes you feel proud. And, above all, it makes you wish every book was written like this: forthright, absorbing and genuinely moving."

'The Wilderness' by Samantha Harvey (2009)
"Samantha Harvey is an exquisite writer and a skilled novelist. The Wilderness is so accomplished on so many different levels -- stylistically, creatively, intellectually -- that it seems astonishing that this is her first novel."

What books did you most enjoy this year?

'The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea' by Randolph Stow

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 408 pages; 2008.

I loved this book so much I read it twice. First, in March, then again last week. And on both occasions I found myself falling in love with the story and wishing it would never end. I'm sure I could read it a third time (a fourth time, a fifth time... you get the idea) and not grow sick of it. It's one of those beautiful stories that's easy-to-read but if you dig a little deeper you'll unravel layers of meaning.

Essentially the book, which was first written in 1965, is a coming-of-age story. It is set in Geraldton, Western Australia, where the author, who now lives in England, was born. Although my Penguin Modern Classics edition claims it is "not a self portrait" there's no mistaking The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea's semi-autobiographical roots. It has a truly authentic feel for the time and the place, and it's easy to find yourself entirely immersed in this world, smelling the eucalyptus wafting on the breeze and feeling the hot sand of the beach between your toes.

It's a beautiful, somewhat nostalgic look at what it was like to grow up in one of the most remote areas on the planet, sandwiched between the desert and the Indian ocean, at a time when the Second World War was raging in Europe, and the Japanese were getting closer and closer to invading Australian soil. When the story opens in 1941 the Japanese have yet to bomb Darwin (that happens in February 1942) but the threat feels very real.

Young Rob Coram is just six years old and his life revolves around school, playing at the beach and avoiding his younger sister, Nan. His father, a quiet, solitary man, is stationed at the local garrison and plays little part in his life, and even less so when the family is evacuated to the rural hinterlands. It is here that we are introduced to Rob's favourite cousin, Rick, who at 20 years old has given up his law studies to join the Army. Rob is devastated.

The book follows both their lives over the next eight years and is divided into two parts: "Rick Away 1941-1945" and "Rick Home 1945-1949".

It's the second part which is probably more moving of the two, because Rick's time as a prisoner of war in Mandalay has scarred him psychologically and he finds it difficult to readjust to normal life. When Rob hears someone describe his beloved cousin as "immature" he adds it to a catalogue of offences in which "everything was wrong with Rick" :

Rick was immature.
He was lazy.
He was a narcissist.
He used dirty language. [...]
He talked like Hitler about the Bomb.
He fainted.
He cried in his sleep, and when he had got drunk at Andarra on New Year's Eve.
He had stayed at the very bottom of the Amy.
He had given up his campaign ribbons, &c., to a kid in the street as soon as he got them.
He had not given his campaign ribbons, &c., to Rob.

The prose style is simple and perfectly encapsulates the mindset of the boy. It's incredibly poetic in places, not surprising given Stow's career (he's had much poetry published), and his beautiful descriptions of the landscape and the changing seasons, are reminiscent of Irish writer John McGahern:

The dark grey berry-bushes on the vacant land grew green and soft-looking, and put out small, mauve-tinged flowers. Then spring came, loud with bees, and the red berries formed, and in many yards were yellow flowering cassias. When the petals fell, the flowers turned into writhing green snakes full of seeds.
The peppertrees bloomed. At Sandalwood the olives drizzled continually, the little green-white flowers and unformed fruit whispering down.
In the early mornings the harbour was polished like a blue mirror.

The merry-go-round is a recurring motif, symbolising the unity of the family and the circle of life, two themes the book revolves around (yes, pun intended). Indeed, the beauty of the story is following Rob's transformation from the naive young boy who thinks the mast of a wrecked ship out at sea is a merry-go-round despite his mother's claims to the contrary. (It's only when he manages to swim out to the wreck with a friend as a teenage boy that you, the reader, realise he's grown up and the emotional impact of this, at least for me, cannot be underestimated.)

The story deals with other themes in varying degrees, including what it is to be Australian and whether it is possible to outgrow your country; the differences between a city and rural upbringing; isolation and belonging; boyhood and adulthood; family and loneliness; war and peace.

It's not a perfect novel (there are occasional clunky "bits" and some of the ideas and attitudes presented, especially towards aboriginals and the Japanese, are dated and offensive), but it's a highly readable, entertaining, often funny and incredibly moving story. I'm grateful to Penguin for bringing it back into print because this is the kind of book that deserves a wider audience. I can only hope that they might do the same to Stow's remaining back catalogue.

My two picks of the year

The lovely Kirsty McHugh, at Oxford University Press, here in the UK, recently asked a host of her favourite British-based book bloggers to nominate their favourite reads for the year. The first part of her "picks of the year" is now online -- and I'm happy to report my selections are included. What did I choose? You'll have to pop along to the OUP blog to find out...

Most enjoyable reads of 2009, as nominated by Reading Matters' readers

End-of-year lists are popping up everywhere right now. I'll be publishing mine shortly, but in the meantime I thought I'd compile something a little different.

Last week I asked readers of this blog to nominate the most enjoyable book they'd read in 2009, as part of my competition to win a copy of The Museum of Innocence. I've now cut-and-pasted all the nominations into one rather long list. The hyperlinks take you to reviews I've written.

Here's the list in full, in the order in which they were nominated:

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (2 nominations)
Stone's Fall by Iain Pears
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Count Magus and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
The Virtuoso by Sonia Orchard
Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck by Dan Heath and Chip Heath
Mariana by Monica Dickens
The Twyborn Affair by Patrick White
Of a Boy by Sonya Hartnett
Truth by Peter Temple
The Natural Order of Things by Antonio Lobo Antunes
Snow by Orhan Pamuk
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz
Valley of Grace by Marion Halligan
Fateless by Imre Kertesz
No Word from Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters by by Charlotte Mosley
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Cartesian Sonata by William H. Gass
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber
The Purloined Boy by Mortimus Clay
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Sophies Choice by William Styron
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson (3 nominations)
Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
Lucky Girl by Mei Ling Hopgood
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
The Boneman's Daughters by Ted Dekker
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Homicide by David Simon
The Girl who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Steig Larsson
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee

[You can view last year's list, nominated by Reading Matters' readers, here.]

'Invisible' by Paul Auster

 

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 320 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I think I may have developed a wee bit of a literary crush on Paul Auster, although our relationship took a little while to develop. Indeed, I was ready to dump him before it even began, because our first meeting in which I read Oracle Night, back in 2005, was not a particularly pleasant one: I simply didn't get what he was all about. But then I gave him a second chance and read the New York Trilogy and suddenly it all began to make sense. Auster is a novelist who plays with the format, concentrates on recurring themes (for example, coincidence, writing and story-telling, truth and memory) and often makes himself part of the action.

This novel, his 16th, is one of his more accessible, and would make the perfect introduction to anyone who has yet to try Auster for themselves.

It's told in four interlocking parts. The first introduces us to Adam Walker, a 20-year-old poet and literature student at Columbia University, who meets Frenchman Rudolf Born, a visiting professor, and his seductive young girlfriend, Margot, at a party. The chance introduction is to have a long-lasting impact on Adam's life. Initially it all seems rather positive, because Born is a rich man and he's keen to employ Adam as the editor of a new literary magazine he wants to launch. But then it all goes terribly wrong, for reasons I won't divulge, and Adam finds himself wishing he'd never met Born, who comes across as quite a creepy, violent, narcissist capable of the most hideous crime.

The second part is told from James (Jim) Freeman's perspective. He once attended classes at Columbia with Adam, although they were never close, and went on to become a very successful writer. The pair fell out of touch, but then 38 years later, Jim receives a part-written manuscript from Adam and asks for his honest opinion of it. The manuscript, entitled Summer, is included, and forms the bulk of this part of Invisible. It tells the story of what happened to Adam after his falling out with Born in the spring of 1967, and includes an eye-opening, somewhat racy, account of Adam's incestuous relationship with his sister.

The third part is again told from Jim's perspective, with the second part of Adam's manuscript, entitled Fall, included. This details Adam's move to Paris and his half-cooked ploy to extract revenge on Rudolph Born on home turf. It also recounts his friendship with Born's step-daughter.

The fourth and final part has Jim meet Adam's sister, Gwyn, a 61-year-old beauty, to discuss whether the manuscript should ever be published given it has quite damaging revelations about her in the text. Born's step-daughter also has her chance to tell her side of the story.

As you can tell, there's quite a lot of jumping around of perspectives, although it's all told in the first person. It's only Adam's manuscript that switches around. But this is fairly typical Aster fare, because he has a penchant for including a book within a book, so what you end up reading is a multi-layered narrative. It's a bit like sitting in front of a mirror with a mirror behind you reflecting a never-ending set of images of a person looking in the mirror looking at a person looking in a mirror and so on.

There's no denying I loved this book. I raced through it in just a matter of days and found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. There's something about Auster's work that unsettles the unconscious mind, so that certain scenes and characters will pop into your head unannounced. I have only read a very small selection of his extensive back catalogue but Invisible is one of the better ones I've had the joy of reading. Definitely recommended, regardless of whether you're an Auster virgin or not.

'Esther's Inheritance' by Sándor Márai

 

Fiction - paperback; Picador; 148 pages; 2009. Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes.

This novella, first published in 1939, tells the story of a thwarted love affair between Esther, a vibrant young woman, and Lajos, the man who betrayed her by marrying someone else.

Twenty years have passed and Esther has lived a quiet life of solitude with Nunu, the elderly matriarch of the family, in a large house without electricity ("we kept postponing it because of the expense") and a modest garden. Now her peace is shattered when Lajos sends a telegram to say he and four others will be arriving tomorrow for a visit.

When Nunu declares she will lock up the silver, you immediately realise the visit, and Lajos' character, are not particularly welcome.

What follows reads a bit like a stilted play, with characters moving in and out of the spotlight one at a time, all wringing their hands and talking in overtly theatrical ways. It's a slow, subtle read, but it does sneak up on you, albeit almost 100 pages into the story.

The plot contains a series of revelations that I don't want to mention here for obvious reasons, although it's no secret that Lajos is a complete scoundrel who has spent his life treating people as objects to bend at his will (what we call a psychopath today): he has no morals, no conscience and blames others for the errors of his ways. Or, as Esther so aptly puts it:

You are a strange gambler; you play with passions and people instead of cards. I was one of the queens in your hand. Then you stood up and went off elsewhere. Why? Because you grew bored. You had had enough and simply walked away. That's the truth. That is the terrible immoral truth. One can't throw a woman away the way one does a matchbox simply because one has passions, because that happens to be one's nature, because one finds it impossible being tied to a woman or because one is ambitious, or because everything and everyone is merely useful.

The ending is suitably dramatic, although it doesn't exactly spell things out clearly, and it left me wondering about Esther's motivations: was she everything she purports to be?

I think this is one of those books that probably invites a second or third reading to draw out the hidden meanings and to examine more closely the things that people say to one another in order to determine who's lying and who is not.

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to point out that Márai writes rather beautiful prose, such as the following description of the day of Lajos' visit:

Gossamer was drifting between the trees, and the air was sparkling clear without a trace of mist, a thin transparent solution coating everything with the finest enamel, as if all visible objects, including the sky itself, had been touched in the most delicate of brushes.

If you read Esther's Inheritance and like it, I can recommend Stefan Zweig's Journey into the Past, which treads similar territory and was written at about the same time, but is more "readable" in the sense it grips from the word go, rather than being a slow-burner, and is much less histrionic.

Time to choose a winner

Thanks to everyone who entered my competition to win a copy of Orhan Pamuk's latest novel, The Museum of Lost Innocence. It was by far the most popular competition I've yet run on this blog, with 46 of you putting your name into the virtual hat (although Molly Fox came close earlier this year with 42).

I very much enjoyed discovering everyone's nominations for their most enjoyable read of the year and will compile a separate list for posting on this blog at a later date. In the meantime, simply go to the comments to discover who selected what.

But now it's time to choose 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 14th person to leave a comment wins, so congratulations to Sandra, from Fresh Ink Books: Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence will be winging its way to Canada some time this week!

Many thanks to everyone who entered, and consolations to those who missed out.

'After The Fire, A Still Small Voice' by Evie Wyld

 

Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 304 pages; 2009.

Evie Wyld's debut novel After The Fire, A Still Small Voice hit the headlines last week when it won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys literary prize, which is awarded to a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under. I'd bought the book back in September, following a tip-off from @SineadGleeson, but I didn't pull it off the ever-growing TBR pile until after the award announcement.

The book, which is set in Australia, follows two men, a generation apart, who bottle up their grief and are forever tormented by it. Their stories are told in alternate chapters.

Frank, who's in his late 20s, lives in Canberra. When his relationship breaks down he moves north to start a new life as a recluse on the coast. He sets up home in the abandoned shack that once belonged to his grandparents and works part-time at the local marina. But he's troubled by his past which threatens to unravel his tentative hold on the world.

Leon is the only son of two Dutch immigrants who set up a bakery in suburban Sydney following the Second World War. Their new life in a strange land is forever shattered when Leon's dad volunteers to fight in the Korean War. Later, when Leon is a young man, he finds himself fighting an altogether different war: he's conscripted to Vietnam.

The book interleaves these two seemingly disparate stories together to build up a moving portrait of men on the fringes of society who become scarred by battles, figurative and literal. It portrays their sadness, their loneliness and their melancholy in such a touching way it's hard not to be emotionally affected by it. If nothing else, it superbly captures that space between people that prevents them from talking about the terrible things they've done and the secrets that they hold dear.

It's a terrifically mature piece of work, belying Wyld's age -- she's just 29. It's even more impressive when you consider that the male voices she uses throughout the book ring true. And, if that's not enough, she has all the descriptions of Australia, from the huntsman spiders that curl up inside your clothes to the smell of the eucalyptus wafting on the air, absolutely pitch perfect.

The prose style is effortless, the characterisation superb -- she really gets inside the heads of these people without over-explaining anything -- and the pacing is spot on. I'll admit to holding my breath in a few places, because there are certain revelations that I just never saw coming, and I'm glad that the cheap literary stunts that could have been used to ratchet up the tension are clearly avoided.

After The Fire, A Still Small Voice isn't a perfect novel, but it's a highly accomplished one and very deserving of its recent accolade. I'll be very surprised if it doesn't collect a whole swag more.

Book giveaway: Orhan Pamuk's 'The Museum of Innocence'

My recent inventory of unread books revealed I own two copies of Orhan Pamuk's latest novel, The Museum of Innocence, which were sent to me by the publisher.

I plan on reading the book some time soon, but I don't really need two editions, so thought I'd offer up my extra copy to one of my blog readers.

To enter the competition simply leave a comment by 9am GMT on Sunday December 13 telling me the name of the most enjoyable book you've read this year. 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.

Please make sure you include a valid email address when you log in to comment. This won't be displayed with your comment, but allows me to contact you if you end up being the lucky winner. Those comments without valid email addresses will be disqualified.

Five Christmas reads

With Christmas getting closer and closer, I thought I'd do a very quick round-up of some festive reads. So, without further ado, here's five novels set during the Christmas period that you may enjoy...

'A Redbird Christmas' by Fannie Flagg

As much as I hate the term "heart-warming" I can't help but use it to describe this delightfully charming tale set in rural Alabama. Peppered with plenty of kooky characters -- four widows, a couple of bachelors, a crippled girl and a tame bird -- and a simple plot -- 52-year-old city man with only a few months to live moves to warmer climes and gains a second chance at life, while a young girl abandoned by her trailer-trash family falls in love with a red cardinal and is "adopted" by a local woman -- A Redbird Christmas is a gentle read that won't tax your brain matter.

'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen

This is a giant, rollicking, complicated, multi-layered novel about an all-American family facing up to the reality of the past as two ageing parents, Enid and Alfred, plan one last Christmas dinner for their three adult children. On initial reading, it's a bit difficult to know exactly where it is that Franzen's novel is going; there are stories within stories and, at times, characters appear to go off on bizarre tangents. But, upon closer inspection, this rambling chaos is, in fact, cleverly planned out and well plotted as the many and varied threads of the story become woven into one amazing and beautifully written tome.


'The Gift' by Pete Hamill

Coming in at just over 150 pages, Pete Hamill's The Gift is a quick-to-read novella set in Brooklyn, New York in the 1950s. The Americans are mired in a war with Korea, and Pete, the first person narrator, is a teenage sailor on leave for the Christmas holidays. It's a bittersweet return, for as much as he's happy to see his family again, there are two heartaches he must deal with: the father that he feels does not love him and the girlfriend who has replaced him for another.

'The Christmas Tree' by Jennifer Johnston

This is a short, all-too brief novel but all the major issues we have to confront during our lifetimes -- from choosing a career to having children, from never being able to escape the past to not ever truly knowing the people we should be closest to -- is encompassed within its 168 pages. There's no doubt that The Christmas Tree is a totally absorbing tale, but it's also one of the best I have ever read about the human condition. This is the kind of literature that makes you goggle-eyed with the sheer beauty of it. It's not exactly a festive read, but it is a memorable one.

'Life in Seven Mistakes' by Susan Johnson

The book opens on "a blistering December afternoon" on Australia's Gold Coast. The Barton family, which is spread across the continent, gathers at the parental home for the Christmas holidays. But this is no carefree, happy family get-together. There are underlying tensions and complicated family relationships with which to contend. There's plenty of thought-provoking material here to mull over: How do you ever reconcile your childhood with your adult life? How do parents cope with children who don't live up to expectation? At what point do you learn to accept responsibility for your own life and your own mistakes?

Suggestions for other appropriately seasonal reads are very welcome...

'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes

 

Fiction - paperback; Gollancz; 224 pages; 2000.

Daniel Key's Flowers for Algernon is a very special science fiction novel that reveals much about the human condition and the ways in which we relate to others. It touches on many issues including the way we treat the mentally handicapped, the ethics of scientific experimentation on animals (and humans), our desire to be "normal", the differences between IQ and EQ, and the ways in which our childhood experiences impact on our adult lives.

It was initially published as a novella in 1959 for which it won the best short fiction prize at the 1960 Hugo Awards. Keyes then expanded it into a full-length novel but it was rejected by five publishers. When it was finally printed by Harcourt in 1966 it won the Nebula Award for Best Fiction that same year.

I read the short story version of Flowers for Algernon when I was at secondary school, but this was the first time I'd read the fully fledged novel. It tells the story of Charlie Gordon who has an IQ of just 68. He is 32 years old, no longer has any contact with his family and supports himself by working in a bakery, where he sweeps the floors and runs errands.

Researchers at the local university select him to take part in a scientific experiment designed to boost his intelligence which has already proved successful on a mouse called Algernon. The story is told in diary form, or "progress reports", from Charlie's perspective. Initially his writing abilities are rather dubious, with grammatical errors and phonetic spellings throughout, but as his intelligence increases so does his ability to express himself.

Within quite a short period of time, Charlie becomes much cleverer than his colleagues at the bakery, who begin to shun him because they don't understand his sudden transformation from simpleton to genius. But his emotional development is still stunted, which causes problems with how he relates to others, especially women.

Things begin to unravel when he attends the scientific conference, where the success of the experiment is to be announced to the public for the first time.

We were the main attraction of the evening, and when we were settled, the chairman began his introduction. I half expected him to boom out: Laideezzz and gentulmennnnnn. Step right this way and see the side show! An act never before seen in the scientific world! A mouse and a moron turned into geniuses before your very eyes!

From then on, Charlie goes on an amazing psychological adventure as he comes to terms with his past (including the mother who dumped him in a home when he was a young boy because he wasn't "normal") and develops feelings for the teacher who once took pity on him. It's an amazing journey, full of ups and downs. It's also hugely emotional, because as Charlie's self-awareness and moral conscience grows, so does his frustration and his pain. Was the experiment really worth it? Was he really better off being exceptionally intelligent? Or was he happier being a simpleton who at least knew his role in the world?

I won't spoil the ending, but it's a thought-provoking one. I'm so glad I read this truly wonderful book, because it's a story that will stay with me for a long time. Despite its age it seems remarkably contemporary. If you've never read any science fiction before, this may well be the place to start.

----

This book was chosen by Jackie as part of our Riverside Readers book group. Here's some other posts written about the book by fellow members:

• Simon's review

• Novel Insights' review

'The Maintenance of Headway' by Magnus Mills

 

 Fiction - hardcover; Bloomsbury; 152 pages; 2009.

You know you've really enjoyed a book when you titter your way through it, which is exactly what I did when I eagerly devoured Magnus Mills' latest novel, The Maintenance of Headway.

Mills, who is one of my favourite authors, is, admittedly, not for everyone. He writes in a deliberately understated way, with an almost childlike naivety. He doesn't bother with extraneous detail, because everything moves forward chiefly through dialogue. This allows him to really get to the heart of the matter, which, in most of his novels, is this simple premise: English life is plagued by bureaucracy and officialdom for no other reason than it keeps people in employment. 

In The Maintenance of Headway, Mills turns his scornful eye towards the running of the London bus network. (Mills himself was a bus driver when his first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, was published.) Well, I suspect it's London for the city isn't named, but the description of the street system -- "The streets are higgledy-piggledy and narrow; there are countless squares and circuses, zebra crossings and pelicans. Go east from the arch and you've got twenty-three sets of traffic lights in a row" -- is unmistakable. I'm also convinced that the "bejewelled thoroughfare" ("a great canyon of flagship stores stretching side by side for nearly a mile") mentioned in the text is actually London's Oxford Street.

As to the story, there's not really much to it. In fact, it's pretty much devoid of plot. The book is essentially a satire that pokes fun at the overly regimented (and somewhat unsuccessful) way in which the Board of Transport runs its buses, where "there's no excuse for being early" and everyone bemoans the loss of the Venerable Platform Bus (which can only be another way of describing the now defunct but rather iconic Routemaster) with its conductors and no doors. It covers the running battle between the bus drivers, who just want to drive buses to their required destinations with a minimum of fuss, and the inspectors, who meddle with the timetables and routes under the guise of "maintaining headway" .

Much of it is laugh-out-loud funny, particularly if you have a dry sense of humour. The wit comes chiefly through the conversations held between drivers on their tea-breaks. I was rather partial to the rogue driver, Jason, with his reckless attitude to passenger safety. In a discussion about passenger's who deliberately ring the bell with no intention of getting off, Jason says:

'If they keep doing it on my bus I give them some treatment with the brake and the accelerator. Rough them up a bit:  teach them a lesson.' 
'What about all the innocent people?' I asked. 'The ones who haven't touched the
bell?' 
'Tough, isn't it?' said Jason.

If you've ever experienced the joys of being a bus passenger, there's a lot in this funny little novel you'll recognise. And next time you wait ages for a bus and then three come along at once, you'll know exactly who to blame.

'Poet and hack' at St Pancras International

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I took these photographs of Sir John Betjeman's statue at St. Pancras International (also known as St Pancras railway station) last week.

Sir John (1906-1984) was a poet, writer and broadcaster, who staunchly defended Victorian architecture and was largely responsible for ensuring the beautiful facade of this building was not pulled down when there was a move to do so in the 1960s.

This wonderful statue, by sculptor Martin Jennings, stands on the platform in the newly revamped station. It's a fitting tribute to him: from a distance he almost looks real, hand on hat to stop it blowing away, and his coat billowing in the wind, as he stands looking up at the the most glorious single span roof I've ever seen.

At his feet are lines from his own poetry, including: "Here where the cliffs alone prevail. I stand exultant, neutral, free,/ And from the cushion of the gale. Behold a huge consoling sea."

'Are you Somebody?' by Nuala O'Faolain

Non-fiction - paperback; New Island Books (2nd edition); 264 pages; 2008.

I've read some extraordinary memoirs in recent years, all by professional writers -- Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost, Amélie Nothomb's The Life of Hunger -- and this one, by Irish author, journalist and TV producer Nuala O'Faolain, is right up there with the best of them.

O'Faolain, who died last year aged 68 from cancer, was a household name in Ireland. Indeed, in the introduction to this edition, she writes that she was "fairly well known" but is quick to point out that she was "no star":

People have to look at me twice or three times to put a name on me. Sometimes when I'm drinking in a lounge bar, a group of women, say, across the room begin to look at me, and send one of their number over to me, or when I'm in the supermarket someone who has just passed me by turns back, and comes right up to me and scrutinises my face. 'Are you somebody?' they ask.

By contrast, I know very little about O'Faolain outside of her wonderful novel My Dream of You, which I read earlier in the year and had been told was a thinly veiled biography. Having enjoyed it so much I figured I should try the "real" thing, which is how I came to read this memoir.

There's no doubt that O'Faolain knows how to write. There's also no doubt that she knows how to do so in a very candid way. There's no hedging her bets, or taking a softly-softly approach. It's all here, warts and all.

She was born one of nine children in 1940 "when nine was not even thought of as a big family among the teeming, penniless, anonymous Irish of the day". She viewed herself as a nobody, just an ordinary girl, in a country constricted by Catholicism, who would eventually be married and kept by a man. And yet, for most of Nuala's life, she rages against this stereotypical expectation and breaks as many social norms as she can.

Without going into too much detail, she moves in with a man she has not married (a huge no-no in Holy Catholic Ireland at the time) and later flees to England, where she forges a hugely successful academic and journalistic career. But along the way, despite her successful working life, there is something missing: a troubled past and estranged relationship with her family seems to keep her back (her father, a well-known Irish journalist, does not come off very well in this memoir, nor her mother, who turned to drink to numb the pain of a bad marriage). And then there's her promiscuity and search for "passion" which ultimately leaves her feeling rather lost and empty.

Surprisingly, for a woman so candid about her sexual desires, she gives scant regard to her partner of 15 years, the journalist Nell McCafferty and barely mentions her in this book, apart from describing the odd cosy holiday together. (Perhaps Nuala's second volume, entitled Almost There, may fill in some of these gaps.)

Are You Somebody? is about one woman's search for meaning, dealing with a past that you cannot leave behind and coming to terms with growing old. There's a sadness at the heart of this memoir, and a slow-burning rage, too, and perhaps just a smidgen of self-pity. But, ultimately, it's a powerhouse of a read, and you come away from it feeling as if you really got to know the lonely, flawed and hugely intelligent and brave woman who wrote it.

A new genre?

I wondered how long it would take, but it looks like the "credit crunch" novels are starting to filter through...

In January Harvill Secker is publishing Henry Sutton's Get Me Out of Here, which is billed as "a darkly comic, state-of-the-nation odyssey set in Canary Wharf at the height of the financial crisis of autumn 2008."

Meanwhile, in March, Faber and Faber is publishing Alex Preston's This Bleeding City, which "picks over the carcass of the financial markets in the wake of the recent crash" while telling a "heartbreaking love story".

Anyone know any others on the radar?

'A romantic thriller about men not talking' scoops prize

Congratulations to Evie Wyld, who has won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys literary prize for her debut novel -- and one that's been languishing in my TBR since September -- After the Fire, A Still Small Voice. The prize is worth £5,000.

You can hear Evie talk about her novel in the clip below.

'Books v. cigarettes' by George Orwell

Non-fiction - paperback; Penguin; 144 pages; 2008.

Books v. cigarettes is a small collection of essays by George Orwell brought together as part of Penguin's Great Ideas Series 3. The title of the book comes from an essay of the same name in which Orwell considers how much money he spends on his two vices, reading and smoking. This particular essay, first published in the Tribune on 8 February, 1946, will resonate with book lovers the world over, because how many of us have foregone some other pleasure (or necessity) in favour of a good book?

To prove that reading is not an expensive hobby out of the reach of ordinary citizens, Orwell counts all the books he owns (this sounds remarkably like what I have done in recent weeks, tackling my TBR piles) and adds up their total price to work out how much money he has spent on reading over a 15-year period. He discovers he has some 900 books and that it has cost him a little over £11 per year. 

He also includes his newspaper and periodicals intake, which is quite impressive: £8 per year on "two daily papers, one evening paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and one or two monthly magazines".  (I suspect if Orwell was around today he'd be a complete internet junkie, reading all the news sites, book blogs, Twitter feeds and so on.) He also spends roughly £6 per year on library subscriptions and cheap paperbacks, chiefly Penguins, "which one buys and then loses or throws away". 

All up, he estimates reading costs him £25 per year, which, according to this calculator, is the equivalent of £648 in today's money. By comparison, he spends £20 a year on cigarettes and beer.

In the grand scheme of things, he thinks this is quite reasonable although he points out that it is difficult to establish "any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them".

His second essay, Bookshop Memories, recalls his time spent working in a second-hand bookshop. His observations are both slightly snobby ("I doubt whether 10 per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one") and acutely funny:

Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover.

This quote made me laugh out loud, because I spent six years working in bookshops and used to get vague requests like this all the time!

Books v. cigarettes also includes a wonderful essay about reviewing books and another on the state of literature, which will appeal to bibliophiles. The rest of this slim volume tackles other non-bookish subjects: patriotism, the relationship between doctors and patients, and Orwell's childhood memoirs spent at an exclusive boarding school for which he obtained a scholarship.

All up, this is a perfect, effortless read, highly personable and quite bookish, if you like that sort of thing.