Reading Matters

Triple Choice Tuesday: Winstonsdad's Blog

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Stu from Winstonsdad's Blog, one of the more unconventional literature blogs out there. I say unconventional, because Stu largely covers translated fiction and his posts tend to ignore the usual rules of grammar. But his blog is a fascinating wealth of unusual and under-rated fiction from across the globe, a great resource to dig around in if you're looking for reviews of books you have probably never even heard of.

Stu is married, is in his late thirties and works supporting people with learning disablities. Winston is his dog.

Without further ado, here's Stu's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: A Universal History of Infamy by Jorge Luis Borges

I bought this about 20 years ago in Barter Books in Alnwick. It was one of the first few South American books I read. Borges collects a number of stories here centering on real life people, mainly rogues and criminals like Billy the Kid and Ching Shuih. The stories are witty and dreamlike, and range from a a couple of pages to 20 pages; Borges ever only wrote shorter fiction.

This was a wonderful introduction to the greatest South American writer. His influence can be seen in Marquez, Bolano and even the flash fiction that has become the flavour recently. So, if you think Borges is scary, this would be the place to start. He wrote it early in his writing life -- you can see what made his later works great in these early tales. He lived in Beunos Aries and worked in the library. He also became blind in later life and would have people read to him like Alberto Manguel. I love the twist on real life these tales give and the love of South American fiction it gave me.

 

A book that changed my world: Obabkoak by Bernardo Atxaga

Now I read this last year and it in its own small way set forth what Winstonsdad's Blog is all about -- books in translation. The book is set in a small Basque village and is a set of interlinking tales about the people that live in this smalll village in the Basque area of Spain. The loves, lives and losses, a small drawf that dreams he is a great poet, a half-German half-Basque that admires German culture over his village culture.

This books contains many things I love. It is so different to any books written in English style-wise, but the stories it tells are universal. Any village is always a collection of charcaters and always a few strange people. Novels about villages are always ones I look out for and interlocking tales are something I love, so this made me want to shout from the roof "read this book" and thus start my blog and then, looking back, made me want to blog about translations. This is one of the few books written in Basque and one of the even few translated in to English.

 

A book that deserves a wider: Encylopedia of Snow by Sarah Emily Miano

Now people may say the "translation boy" has picked a book by a American writer, but I'll tell you why. I would have picked Sebald as my favourite but I know dovegreyreader did that last month, so I decided to honour my hero with a pupil of his here.

The premise of the book is that it was found in an abandoned car after a snow storm. So what is this book? Well it's like a collection of a snow watcher and contains facts, poems, tales, historic tales and photographs. The style of the book owes much to Sebald but Miano is a lot more poetic than Sebald in her wrting. This book needs to be read to absorb it fully, there are so many parts it is like a snowflake itself. I always pick it up when it is snowy and flick through it and read either a poem or a historic tale of a great snow fall.

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Thanks, Stu, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Stu's choices? Have you read any of these books? As I expected, Stu has chosen some unusual titles, all of which could be argued deserve a wider audience. These recommendations do make me itch to read more translated fiction...

'Offshore' by Penelope Fitzgerald

Fiction - paperback; 4th Estate; 181 pages; 2009.

Don't let the slim size of this book fool you. Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore, which won the Booker Prize upon publication in 1979, packs so much into its economic prose that I often had to re-read entire pages because I'd overlooked an important detail crucial to the rest of the storyline.

The book, which is set in 1961, tells the story of a motley crew of residents in a houseboat community on the Thames. Here, in the shadow of Battersea Power Station (which was still operational then, and not the derelict grade II* listed building we now know -- and love), we meet a handful of core characters: Richard, a former navy man, who loves living on the river and keeps everything shipshape; Maurice, the male prostitute, who stores stolen goods for his mysterious friend Harry; Willis, a 65-year-old maritime artist, who is desperate to sell his leaking boat so he can live on dry land; and Nenna, an expat Canadian, with two young girls, whose husband refuses to live on a boat.

While there's not much plot (Fitzgerald's strength is in characterisation and scene-setting), the story mainly hinges on Nenna's attempt to get her husband back, because she needs someone to fold maps for her and "turn over the Times so the pages lie flat".

That dry humour runs throughout the novel, which is rich with comic moments. Even before you've got a handle on the story, Fitzgerald is making you laugh out loud. I had my first chuckle on page 3 when we discover that Maurice changed the name of his boat when he first moved to the Reach, because he realised that residents were addressed by the name of their craft -- for example, Lord Jim, Rochester, Dunkirk -- "and that he himself would accordingly be known as Dondeschiepolschuygen IV, which was described in gilt lettering on his bows".

A few more pages into the novel and there are more chuckles to be had when you discover that the postman no longer delivers mail to the Reach

...after he had fallen twice from Maurice's ill-secured gangplank, the whole morning's mail soaked away in the great river's load of rubbish, the GPO, with every reason on its side, had notified the Reach that they could no longer undertake deliveries. They acknowledged that Mr Blake, from 'Lord Jim', had rescued their employee on both occasions and they wished to record their thanks for this. The letters, since this, had had to be collected from the boatyard office, and Laura [Richard's wife] felt that this made it not much better than living abroad.

The book also provides a real insight into what it must be like to live in that kind of "netherworld", not quite belonging to either land or water, and consequently viewed by other members of society as being "odd" or impoverished.

The barge-dwellers would have liked to be more respectable than they were. They aspired towards the Chelsea shore, where, in the early 1960s, many thousands lived with sensible occupations and adequate amounts of money.

In one telling scene, Richard's friend, Pinkie (so-called because of his love of pink gin), a real estate agent, asks him when he's going to "give up this nonsense about living in the middle of the Thames?" When Richard claims he isn't selling the boat and that he didn't buy it as an investment, the response is: "Then what in the name of Christ did you buy her for?"

Nenna's husband feels similarly. Despite returning from a two-year stint working abroad with his tail between his legs (the resultant riches he had hoped to acquire never appeared), he cannot bring himself to live on the boat that Nenna bought in his absence. Why? Because he feels it is beneath him, and yet he is happy to lodge in a North London terrace house with a colleague and his mother!

Of course, a book set on the Thames could not help but make the river a central character, and Fitzgerald writes of it so evocatively that you can see the water swirling, feel the tides rising and falling, hear the gulls squawking overhead.

This is a dear, gem of a book, comic and melancholy by turn, and peopled with intriguing characters. My only quibble is the falsity of the children's dialogue (too adult, too contrived, but possibly 12-year-olds spoke like that in the early Sixties?) and the all-too abrupt ending. But as my first experience reading Penelope Fitzgerald I very much enjoyed it -- thanks to KevinfromCanada for the recommendation!

'The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island' by Chloe Hooper

Non-fiction - paperback; Vintage; 272 pages; 2010.

In late April this year I read Chloe Hooper's extraordinary non-fiction book, The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island, and found it deeply disturbing in a way I could not quite put my finger on. Over the weeks to follow I tried to review it but kept hitting a wall; I could just not formulate my thoughts in any coherent way.

Since then, I've thought about it on and off, wondering why I was having so much trouble writing about the book. It was only when Simon, from Savidge Reads, asked me whether I'd read it yet (he'd seen the thumbnail picture in my "Reviews coming soon" menu bar) that I had to confess I couldn't bring myself to review it because it made me feel horribly ashamed to be Australian. And that, my friends, is the stumbling block I hadn't realised when I first struggled to review this book some three months ago.

In telling the real life story of the death of an Aboriginal man in police custody, Hooper reveals the dark underbelly -- where black man is pitted against white man, and vice versa -- of my homeland. It is not a pleasant read, nor even a satisfying one (particularly as the conclusion of the subsequent court case left much to be desired), but it's certainly a thought-provoking book that sheds light on some painful paradoxes in modern day Australia.

If nothing else, The Tall Man reveals how Australia is not one nation united but a series of regions diametrically opposed to one another. I'm not necessarily referring to white versus black, but to the cultural gap between those that live in the North (the tropics and sub-tropics) and those that live in the South (mainly NSW and Victoria). (I have lived on both sides of the North/South divide, and can testify that the two opposing "cultures" do very much exist. Early in this book, Hooper meets a Northern cabbie who says he can detect a Southerner easily, because "they're fuckwits". Charming.)

Of course there are other divisions too, between the cities and the outback, between the West coast and the eastern seaboard, between Tasmania and the mainland. But the division which Hooper's book really hones in on is the one between the haves and the have nots, and never is this more apparent than in Aboriginal communities which often become "impoverished ghettos of alcoholism, petrol sniffing, brutality, arrests and early deaths".

Palm Island -- don't let the idyllic-sounding name fool you -- is one of those places. Situated off the Far North Queensland coast, it was set up by the State Government in 1916 as a place to house Aboriginals. This was all thanks to the 1897 Aboriginal Protection Act, which made all Aboriginals in Queensland, whether full blood or "half-castes", as wards of the state. The Palm Island Mission became the dumping ground for these people, somewhere they could be looked after and controlled. But, as Hooper points out, it's isolation meant that it became "increasingly authoritarian -- a kind of tropical gulag".

When Aboriginals were granted equal rights in 1967, it remained a segregated community, and today it is not much different. Home to 2,500 people, Palm Island is one of the largest Aboriginal communities in Australia. The only white faces in the street belong to the teachers, nurses and police who work there. (When Hooper arrives for the first time she feels "incandescently white".) But it's a long way from anywhere: two hours by ferry from Townsville, on the mainland, or a 15-minute flight on a small, chartered plane.

For those who don't know the case on which the book is based, let me provide a short thumbnail portrait. On Friday November 19, 2004, Cameron Doomadgee, a 36-year-old aboriginal man living on Palm Island is arrested for swearing at a white police officer. He is thrown into the back of a divisional van and transported to the police station. There's a scuffle and a punch thrown when he is escorted from the van to his cell. Later, just 45-minutes after his arrest, Doomadgee is found dead, a black eye the only tell-tale sign of violence.

The police claim Doomadgee tripped on a step and that he must have died of an unseen head injury arising from that accident. But the autopsy revealed that he had four broken ribs, a ruptured portal vein and a liver almost cleaved in two, injuries consistent with a serious car accident. As Hooper states, "his internal injuries were so severe that even with instant medical attention he would not have survived".

A second pathology report discovered further bruising on Doomadgee's right eye and eyelid, his forehead, the back of his head, the upper part of his back, along the right side of his jaw and on his right and left hands, suggesting he had been kicked while lying down.

Of course, police deny any wrongdoing, and so an inquest is held. The man responsible for policing the island is the "tall man" of the title: Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, who has won much respect for being a firm and fair cop. But did Hurley snap that day and lose his temper?

Hooper sketches an interesting portrait of a man, just 36 years old and in charge of six white policeman and an Aboriginal liaison officer, who had risen fast up the ranks because he'd been happy to be stationed in remote areas, or as Hooper puts it:

He had become a creature of the Deep North, a specialist in places on the edges of so-called civilisation, Aboriginal communities and frontier towns in Cape York and the Gulf of Carpentaria, places were the streets, the days shimmered as if you were in a kind of fever -- all of it, with its edge of menace, like some brilliant hallucination.

It seems completely at odds with Hurley's character as a fine, upstanding and highly respected policeman for him to be blamed for Doomadgee's death. The island had more than its fair share of problems (according to this wikipedia entry there is "an extreme level of theft, domestic violence, sexual assaults against children and abject drunkenness" brought about by "boredom, aimlessness, lack of education, absence of role models and a complete loss of self-worth"), but by all accounts Hurley had won the respect of the locals.

But following Doomadgee's "unexplained" death, the police were obviously worried about the outfall in the local community -- fifteen extra cops were brought in. When news broke about the first autopsy a riot ensued; the police station was burned to the ground. Hooper describes it in such a way you feel for the officers, trapped behind a barricade, fearing for their lives. One cop called Command, begging the Army to be flown in to rescue them.

The early chapters explain the circumstances of Doomadgee's death and give us an insight into Hurley's reputation; Hooper then turns to tracing the convoluted justice system -- the investigation, the inquest, the submissions, the findings, the trial, the verdict -- which Doomadgee's family find themselves caught up in. The court room scenes are particularly tense and emotional. The games played by lawyers, by police, by those seeking to protect Hurley's reputation at all costs do not go unnoticed by Hooper's perceptive eye. This is court-room drama writ large. It's deeply affecting without being sentimental.

If there is anything positive to come out of this terrible story it is Hooper's own tale about her developing friendship with Doomadgee's family. Effectively she is "adopted" by his sisters, accepted as one of their own. When you realise that Hooper, "like most middle-class suburbanites, grew up without ever seeing an Aborigine, except on the news", this seems the perfect example of how it is possible for two races to get along with each other in the most extreme and distressing of circumstances.

The Tall Man is not your average "true crime" book. It's a sociological, psychological, legal and political drama. In telling the story of the first police officer to be tried for an Aboriginal death in custody, Hooper also tells a peculiar Australian story of a nation divided. We may never know what really happened in that police station, but we know that the destructive forces of white settlement will continue to impact on its native inhabitants and that Palm Island will remain a paradox in the sun. My feelings about the book are summed up nicely by Hooper's last line:

I had wanted to know more about my country and now I did – now I knew more than I wanted to.

New iPhone app: Ian Rankin's Edinburgh

Last November Mr Reading Matters and I went to Edinburgh for a weekend (to celebrate our 10th anniversary -- some of you may remember this post), and while there we went on an Ian Rankin-inspired tour of the city.

It was a two-hour stroll, led by the very entertaining Colin Brown (pictured left), who took us to particular places in the city which feature in Rankin's Rebus' novels. He also incorporated readings of select titles to add to the flavour of the walk. Now, I've never read a Rebus novel, so a lot of it didn't mean all that much to me, but Mr Reading Matters very much enjoyed it -- despite the horrendous Scottish rain!

Towards the end of the walk, standing in the cemetery off the Royal Mile, I asked Colin what Ian Rankin thought of the tours. Having seen a picture of them together on the Rebus Tours website I figured maybe there was some kind of ongoing relationship, or at least an official endorsement. But he didn't really give me a straight answer and seemed quite shocked by the question. I wasn't trying to be deliberately provactive; I just wanted to know whether Rankin viewed the tours favourably, a kind of marketing exercise to boost his sales, or whether he did not appreciate someone profiteering off the back of his work.

And so it was interesting to discover that Rankin is bypassing the "unofficial" tours by compiling his own -- via a free iPhone app called Ian Rankin's Edinburgh produced by his publishers, Orion, and released this week. The app provides...

... a personally guided tour of Edinburgh from Ian himself, including specially created videos, audio, photography and lots of exclusive content to bring this fantastic city and Ian's books to life. Broken down into three mini tours, the app covers around 30 key locations from Ian's books, including the police stations, murder scenes and hidden backstreets of Edinburgh, placing both Inspector Rebus and Ian's exciting new character Malcolm Fox firmly on the map.

I don't have an iPhone, but Mr Reading Matters does -- and he didn't waste any time in downloading this one when I told him about it. Now, if only we'd had that when we went to Edinburgh!

Triple Choice Tuesday: Just William's Luck

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is William Rycroft from Just William's Luck.

William, who is the father of two boys under the age of three, has an extensive blog that covers books, film, music, theatre and art. He also takes some pretty awesome photographs.

On top of that he is an actor, and is currently performing in War Horse in the West End.

Is there anything this chap cannot do?

Without further ado, here's Will's Triple Choice Tuesday selection:

 

A favourite book: American Pastoral by Philip Roth

If you were to force me to choose a favourite writer then I would have to plump for Philip Roth. After reading many of his books I find myself continuously impressed by his intelligence, perception, skill and passion. Whilst I could have mentioned any of a few here, American Pastoral is the one that blew me away when I first read it and then did exactly the same when I came back to it.

Part of Roth's 'American Trilogy' (completed by I Married A Communist and The Human Stain), it is narrated by Roth's alter ego Nathan Zuckerman and tells the story of his boyhood hero, Seymour “the Swede” Levov. Whilst he might appear to be an all-American hero: an athletic star with beautiful wife, daughter and large house it isn't long before Zuckerman delves beneath the veneer and finds a story that packs a punch far stronger than I was expecting, delivered with the kind of skill that has you indignant on behalf of the characters you're reading about, angry and upset by what makes them angry and upset.

I won't mention anything about the plot, but set in a period during the 60s and 70s in America, it allows Roth to comment on race, politics, war, violence, family, urbanity and provides one of the most visceral depictions of a man struggling to cope with the opposite sex I have ever come across. For that last reason it's a book that should be read by both men and women and then talked about. It's amazing where different readers place their sympathy. A must read.

 

A book that changed my world: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Bear with me here. I didn't use to be such an avid reader. I was within the sheltered confines of a vocational boarding school when I read Burgess's iconic novel, roughly the same age as its teenage protagonist, and nobody I knew had read it. As soon as I began I felt like I was reading a secret text, one that required decoding, and as I slowly came to terms with nadsat, the language Burgess invented for Alex and his droogs, I began to realise the power of words and the exhilaration of reading, I could feel myself becoming an adult reader. Never had reading felt particularly cool before but I knew I was reading something controversial and this new language felt like one only a few people were party to. It was the first time I realised how controversial books could be, how provocative, what conflicting emotions they could stir and how complicit the act of reading was.

For a few years afterwards it seemed to be a book which continued to influence my life. I got a chance to see the infamous film whilst it was still banned (and protested inwardly that, like the US edition of the book, it didn't contain the final chapter which is, in my opinion, totally integral to the book, perhaps the whole point of the story) and then later at drama school found myself with the opportunity to play the role of Alex in a production we later toured around Europe. I didn't think that it would be the answer to this question initially but it honestly seems to have been the book that awoke my inner reader and also helped to define what I now do for a living (acting, not being a violent gang member!).


A book that deserves a wider audience: Writing On The Water by Jane Slavin

This is a really tough one. I could have chosen Amos Berry by Allan Seager, a fascinating and genuinely lost masterpiece about what drives a man to commit a murder in rural America (but McSweeney's have already re-discovered him by printing one of his stories). I could also have chosen The Cottagers by Marshall N Klimasewiski, a gripping psychological thriller (but Peter Ho Davies already picked that one in this great article about overlooked books).

What I have chosen is a book that genuinely deserves a wider audience having been denied one initially by certain circumstances. The cover for example. It looks like chick-lit, doesn't it? Right away you have guaranteed that half the population are unlikely to even pick it up. Which is a shame. It is a début novel about obsessional love which contains lots of humour as well as the painful detail and emotion of an intense relationship, breakup and its fallout. I suspect that some, particularly female readers, will nod along in agreement if they've ever been there themselves, whilst the men may well run for the hills! But underneath the dramatic pitch of the novel there is so much truth about what it takes to hand yourself over to someone else and the danger of what happens if they ever let go.

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Thanks, Will, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of William's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've not read any of them, although Clockwork Orange has been sitting in the TBR for about 8 years! Maybe it's time to dust it off...?

'Dead Babies' by Martin Amis

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 223 pages; 2004.

Dead Babies, first published in 1975, was Martin Amis' second novel. It's a rather sordid, but richly comic tale, about a group of young and somewhat privileged Brits living it up over the course of a weekend. Think Chuck Palahniuk, but 30 to 40 years before his time.

The book is not for the faint-hearted, because, while there are no real dead babies in the story, there is plenty of illicit drug-taking, alcohol consumption and debauched sex.

The vast cast of quite vile characters, who gather at the five-bedroom, three-storey Appleseed Rectory in rural Hertfordshire, include: Quentin, who is handsome but deceitful; Andy, who is sexually aggressive; Giles, who is rich but beset by anxiety (his special fixation is losing his teeth); and Keith, who is ugly, dwarf-like and fat, and the butt of everyone's jokes. The two females, Celia (Quentin's wife) and Diana (Andy's girlfriend), are less objectionable, but perhaps because neither are particularly well drawn.

Into this toxic cauldron of adolescent-like friends come three American guests: Marvell, a "postgraduate in psychology, anthropology and environment at Columbia University, underground journalist, film-maker and pop-cultural entrepreneur" with a penchant for hard drugs and pornography; Skip, a slow-talking, quite-stupid Southerner; and Roxeanne, a lively red head with a big chest.

The book is divided into two parts, "Saturday" and "Sunday", and these are further divided into bite-sized chapters, sometimes only a few pages in length. Amis, who butts in every so often with an almost pompous omnipresent narrator's voice to let you know he's in charge of the story, provides carefully scripted scenarios for each character, delving into their back stories one by one before immersing them into present-day activities. It's an effective method of telling such a seemingly chaotic and depraved tale, because it gives you a real sense of each person's motivations and vanities and allows you to see what makes them tick. Despite the fact they're all universally deplorable human beings, there's something about these insights that makes you empathise just a little with their current situation.

As you would expect, the course of the weekend doesn't run smoothly, because these people are nihilistic characters, hell-bent on self-indulgence rather than any sense of responsibility, whether to themselves or to other people. And when things start going horribly wrong, they start going horribly wrong. And just to up the ante that little bit further, Amis injects some psychological terror into the storyline. This is in the form of a series of nasty notes signed by "Johnny", a character no-one seems to know...

Of course, this isn't a book for everyone. Many will find it offensive, but if you get the joke and can appreciate the message at the heart of the book (which is effectively that drugs screw you up, but so, too, does money, privilege and your parents), then you'll find much to laugh at here. Even if you have to do it with your eyes squeezed shut.

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

• Simon's review

'Whatever You Love' by Louise Doughty

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 320 pages; 2010. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

If I was going to recommend a light, entertaining read, something that goes down easily without having to think about it too much, I'd suggest this one. Louise Doughty's ninth novel, Whatever You Love, isn't high-brow literature by any stretch of the imagination, but it is accessible and enjoyable, and I suspect when it's released in trade paperback size it will do very nicely sales wise, thank-you very much.

The story is told in the first-person by a young mother of two, Laura, who has just lost her oldest child, 9-year-old Betty, in a hit-and-run road accident. The tragedy occurs on the very first night Betty is allowed to walk to her after-school dance class, accompanied by her best friend, instead of being collected by an adult.

Because of this key event in the novel, I had expected the narrative to be a fairly grim one in which Laura -- a divorcee still coming to terms with her ex-husband's infidelity three years earlier -- wallows in despair. But while it features it's fair share of hand-wringing and woe-is-me naval gazing, the book is more akin to a psychological thriller (think Nicci French) than a misery memoir.

The tautly written narrative is split into four parts that alternate between Laura's life before Betty's death, and life after. From the outset there are clear hints that Laura, a part-time physiotherapist, is not the most emotionally stable person. In her youth she was burdened with the care of her widowed mother who developed Parkinson's disease. Then, the first serious romance she experiences, turns into a feverish, whirlwind courtship bordering on sexual obsession.

That romance turns into marriage, two children and a nice little terrace house in a British seaside town. But it all comes to an end when she suspects her husband of having an affair when their son Rees is just an infant.

Paranoia ensues when Laura begins receiving anonymous telephone calls, only to be heightened when poison pen letters, blaming her for the marriage breakdown, begin to arrive. By the time of Betty's death, Laura doesn't need much to tip her over the edge. It's only when she hits upon the idea of revenge -- seeking out the driver responsible for killing Betty -- that she enters morally dubious territory indicative of a disturbed mind.

While the story never slides into all-out farce, it's a little melodramatic in places. And if you can forgive Laura's slightly wearing narrative voice, then you will appreciate Doughty's portrait of a woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown. The setting -- an unnamed English seaside town over-run by immigrant workers -- has the requisite seedy atmosphere, although the community tension angle feels slightly forced.

However, where the story works best is Doughty's exploration of family relationships, particularly the ways in which parents are bound together forever despite any subsequent marriage breakdown.

A portrait of bereavement, jealousy and rage, Whatever You Love is a tense, well-plotted read. If you liked Rebecca Frayn's Deceptions it's fair to say you'll probably like this one too.

5 quick links

• Author MJ Hyland gives Raoul Moat's Facebook fans short thrift. (Scottish Herald)

• Sinead Gleeson interviews Christos Tsiolkas about The Slap. (Irish Times)

• Author Christos Tsiolkas takes swipe at 'dry' European fiction. (The Guardian)

• France hails new teenage literary sensation (The Independent)

• Time magazine argues that Jonathan Franzen is a "Great American Novelist" and put him on the cover at the same time [Time]

Triple Choice Tuesday: Asylum

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is John Self from Asylum.

Is there anyone out there that doesn't know John's blog? It's one of the best ones out there -- full of well written, thorough reviews on a wide range of literary fiction -- and certainly the most influential among bloggers with similar reading tastes.

John doesn't have an "about page" on his blog, but I can tell you he lives in Belfast, has a little boy known as "baby self" and is an administrator of Palimpsest. But if I told you anything else I'd have to kill you.

Without further ado, here's John's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: Dr Haggard's Disease by Patrick McGrath

Anyone who follows my blog or other online excursions will probably be sick of hearing about this book. It remains the only book I've re-read within a month of reading it -- and not just because it's so short (180 pages)! It combines a complex time-frame, Biblical language, perverse passions and unresolved madness to create a horrifying delight of a novel. It's set mostly in the smoke and sheen of pre-WW2 England, but narrated retrospectively from one specific moment during the war by a limping, wild-haired doctor who believes his dead lover has come back to him in the body of her son. The ending is the most tender and grotesque, and perhaps the most perfect, that I have ever read.

 

A book that changed my world: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

This was, I think, the first book I read by Jeanette Winterson, and it made me a lifelong (so far) fan of her work. It combines the lyrical lightness of touch of her early novels like Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (for some reason her most widely read book, though to me her least interesting one) with the ambition of her later (sometimes misfired) books like Art & Lies or The Stone Gods.

I chose it as a book which changed my world because it was the first book I read (sometime in 1991, I'd guess) that made me realise that fiction didn't have to be linear and straightforward to be satisfying. It jumps about from the 17th century to the present day, it takes risks and (mostly) gets away with them, it creates a literary giant in the Dog Woman, and it is also very funny. It made me realise that fiction is often most interesting when it's asking questions rather than offering answers.

 

A book that you deserves a wider audience: Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi

This book won the Guardian First Book Award in 2004 but never really got much of a spring of sales out of that. It deserves better, as it's a work of non-fiction which is both thrilling and beautiful. It tells us that, because of all the genetic mutations we acquire from our parents (and our parents' parents), that "no one completely escapes the mutational storm. ... We are all mutants. But some of us are more mutant than others."

It's really the quality of the writing which sets the book apart from those which 'simply' seek to impart information. I still rejoice in this description of the development of a central organ of the human embryo:

"Even as the nerve-cord is forming, the foundations of other organs are being laid. Two hitherto inconspicuous tubes, one on either side, then unite to make a single larger tube running the length of the embryo's future abdomen, an abdominal tube that echoes the neural tube on its back. Within a few days this abdominal tube will begin to twist and then twist again to become a small machine of exquisite design. Though it still looks nothing like what it will become it already shows the qualities that led William Harvey to call it 'the Foundation of Life, the Prince of All, the Sun of the Microcosm, on which all vegetation doth depend, from whence all Vigor and Strength doth flow.' On day 21 it begins to beat."

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Thanks, John, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of John's choices? Have you read any of these books? I'm not surprised to see John name a Patrick McGrath book, an author I keep meaning to explore further. I didn't particularly like Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit when I read it a couple of years ago, but perhaps I might have more luck with Sexing the Cherry? And Mutants sounds completely fascinating...

'Carol' by Patricia Highsmith

Fiction - paperback; Bloomsbury; 320 pages; 2010.

Most of us know the late Patricia Highsmith as a writer of psychological thrillers, such as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr Ripley. But the second novel that Ms Highsmith wrote was a romance.

Sadly, because it focused on a lesbian relationship, her then publisher, Harper, did not want it, but it was picked up by a smaller press and published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. Titled The Price of Salt (later to be changed to Carol on subsequent reprintings), it became hugely popular for a short period of time (it sold nearly 1 million paperback copies in 1953), and then fell out of print. It was reprinted again in 1991 by Naiad Press, and just this year, with a very nice introduction by Val McDermid, by Bloomsbury. I picked it up by chance while book browsing in The Riverside Bookshop, attracted by the gorgeous cover design with its striking use of bold orange.

The story is set in Manhattan in the early 1950s, a locale and time period that I find particularly attractive and interesting. The Second World War is still very much a recent memory, and all the mod-cons we take for granted today simply do not exist. The characters that populate this novel work long hours, they smoke, they drink beer (even the women), they dine out in cheap restaurants, buy meals to make at home from street corner delicatessens, worry about paying the rent and alleviate boredom by going to movie theatres, musical performances, hockey games or take long strolls through the park.

The central figure in the novel is Therese, a 19-year-old "orphan", who has taken a Christmas sales job working on the doll counter of Frankenberg's department store. The job is just a temporary arrangement in order to pay the bills while she looks for something in her real line of work, which is a stage designer.

One day she serves an attractive woman in her early 30s, and finds herself completely smitten by her.

She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist. Her eyes were grey, colourless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by these, Therese could not look away.

Under normal circumstances you would expect Therese, who already has a steady boyfriend -- the ever-dependable if somewhat dull Richard -- to forget this customer. But Therese is determined to befriend her and armed with her address (garnered by arranging to have her purchases home delivered), she sends her a Christmas card. What follows is a burgeoning friendship in which Therese slowly manages to ingratiate herself into Carol's life.

And while Therese is clearly obsessed by Carol, the feelings are not reciprocated because Carol is too caught up in her own problems: a bitter divorce and a potential custody battle over her young daughter. But the dynamic between them soon changes when the pair disappear on a road trip across the United States...

For a novel that is billed as a "lesbian romance" there isn't really much romance in this book. Nor is there any sex. This is more a novel about a young woman's coming of age, of her finding her place in the world and of broadening her horizons beyond her closeted life in Manhattan. On another level it also focuses on the power plays between people -- who has more to lose, who has more to gain -- and of the ways in which our "lifestyle choices", particularly in 1950s America, determine our fate.

It's an incredibly atmospheric story, because Highsmith is able to build a sense of impending doom and menace without really spelling anything out. There's not much detail here, though, and there are frustrating moments when you realise you have to do a lot of reading "between the lines" to understand what is fully going on. I found Therese particularly annoying at times, but perhaps that's because Highsmith has painted such a faithful portrait of someone incredibly naive and unexperienced about affairs of the heart that she feels all too real.

Highsmith is also excellent at maintaining momentum. With its clipped prose and choppy sentences, it feels like a suspense novel, because everything moves so quickly, including the conversations between characters. I found it difficult to put down, if only because I wanted to know how the relationship between Therese and Carol panned out.

On that note, I should point out that if you are considering reading this book, it's best not to read other reviews online, including the wikipedia entry, because they all make a big point of revealing the ending. And if you buy this Bloomsbury edition, leave the introduction by McDermid until last, because it too features a major spoiler. The blurb, I'm happy to report, gives nothing away.

Back to school

Well, I've been keeping this under my hat for a few months, but now it's time to come clean.

Some 14 years after I last graduated (with a Master of Journalism), I'm heading back to university in October. This time I'm embarking on a MA in modern and contemporary literature, and will be doing it part-time over two years.

I submitted my application last Christmas, was interviewed for the position in February and was offered a place in April. Tonight, I've just forked over a large chunk of money for the privilege, so there's no going back now!

Reading lists are starting to arrive, and I'm both daunted and excited by the prospect of studying literature rather than simply blogging about it.

Of course, I hope to continue Reading Matters as per normal, provided the course reading isn't too overwhelming. Typically, I'm going back to school just as the schedules at work go into overdrive in the lead-up to Christmas, but here's hoping I can find a good work/life/study/blogging balance that keeps everyone, but especially me, happy!

'To The Islands' by Randolph Stow

Fiction - paperback; University of Queensland Press; 208 pages; 2002.

Randolph Stow was an Australian writer who achieved great literary success in his early years. When he was just 22 he won the the 1958 Miles Franklin Award for To The Islands and the ALS Gold Medal, for the same book, in 1959. In 1978 he won the Patrick White Award. But ask the average Australian who is, or better still ask them to name the title of one of his books, and you will probably be greeted with a blank face.

Perhaps it doesn't help that Stow only wrote a handful of novels and that he emigrated to the UK circa 1970, effectively turning his back on the Australian literary scene. But it seems such a shame that a man who could craft such amazing fiction, including his mesmirising The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (which I read twice last year I loved it so much) could fall into relative obscurity so quickly.

I read To The Islands not long after I heard that Stow had died of liver cancer, here in the UK, in late May. (The news story of his death, published in The Australian, is very touching, but the comments are particularly telling of how dearly he was held in the affection of so many.)

It's an astonishing read, not least because he was just 22 when he wrote it (and this, I have to point out, was not his first novel, but his third). It's not only ambitious in scope, but there's a wisdom to the story that belies his years. That the book is largely told through the eyes of an ageing Anglican missionary confronting his own inner demons seems a remarkable work of imagination and daring for one so young.

Stow's carefully studied observations about the relationships between white Europeans and Aboriginals are also particularly perceptive. That may not be too surprising given he did spend some time working as a storeman on an Anglican mission in the far north of Western Australia immediately after graduation, but even so, he has captured the fear, violence and misunderstanding between blacks and whites incredibly well, and he has not been afraid to cast a light on some of the darkest, most gruesome events, in Australian history.

The story, as you may have gathered, is set on a remote mission in the Western Australian outback in 1957. Here, the Church of England provides lodging, employment and medical care for aboriginals, a race which has few civil rights  ("Someday we all be citizens, eh, brother?" quips one aboriginal to one of the brothers in an early scene) and is forbidden to drink alcohol. (In the preface to my edition, Stow points out that alcohol did not become a problem until the 1970s.)

An ageing missionary, Stephen Heriot, has ruled the mission for decades. One of the younger missionaries, Helen, describes him as "stone and iron" and "impassive, accustomed through decades to deal with wooings, marriages, disputes".

But when Rex, a troublesome aboriginal, returns to the mission, Heriot is determined to have him banished. Younger members of the mission are less sure about sending him away ("It begins to look a bit like victimisation," Way warns him; "He not a bad man, Rex. You don't give him no chance," says a fellow aboriginal, Richard.)

But one wild night, in the middle of a storm, Heriot believes he may have killed Rex. Full of remorse, he flees the mission on horseback, taking a rifle and a box of cartridges with him. What follows is a kind of adventure story, in which Heriot, confronted by the enormity of the unexplored wilderness around him, begins to experience a spiritual awakening. Meanwhile, his fellow missionaries try to track him down, convinced that Heriot plans to kill himself...

There's no getting away from the fact that this is a quintessential Australian story. Stow's descriptions of the landscape are always beautiful and, for this expat Australian, homesick-inducing. But even if you have never been to Australia, Stow has a way of conjuring the beauty of the surroundings that will make you feel like you have walked the terrain, smelt the eucalyptus, swum in the creeks and billabongs, seen all the amazing wildlife around you.

From the water flagged with lily leaves, lilies flowering among them, birds rose in sudden stages with a clatter of wings. Ibis and white cranes climbed slowly, wild ducks wheeled, and returned, and flew off again. Geese trailed their long cry over the plain, a single black jabiru following.

Before they had gone the children were already in the water, floundering among the lilies, crying to one another of the coolness of it and of its richness in ducks and flowers. The small children danced naked in the shallows with shining skins. The others, in brief pants, some girls in their dresses, dolphined among the lily stems.

It's interesting, too, to see how prescient Stow's views are on race relations given he penned the novel more than 50 years ago. I particularly liked this exchange between Heriot and one of his fellow missionaries, Way:

"As they [the aboriginals] lose simplicity they lose direction. So, what are we going to do with them? Who's going to teach them trades, give them confidence in themselves? Drive them out of this inertia they fall into now their pride's grown enough to make them want above everything to have some sort of competence. I don't know the answers."
"We're promised a technical school, some day, somewhere within a hundred miles."
"I wish it well," said Heriot. "And you. Because you're coming to the most heartbreaking phase in the history of this problem."
"We'll do our best, I hope."
"I hope," echoed Heriot, and looked at Way, that capable middle-aged man, reflectively and approved him. "You've time, I think, to see enormous changes, perhaps the end of physical misery among them, as the old ones die out in the way we old ones do. But in the end you'll have something else to face - misery of the mind. And that will be the hardest, Way."

This is a fascinating novel, one that can easily be read in one sitting, although I think it probably requires at least two read-throughs to fully come to grips with all the ideas presented. Many literary critics have dubbed it a "masterpiece" and I can see why.

As an aside, I read the "very slightly abridged" 1982 edition (which was republished by UQP in 2002) and not the original. Stow says he revised it because it contained "many faults, due partly to immaturity, but more to the fact that my technical competence was not equal to my ambition, which in retrospect makes me realise how horizons narrow in middle age". (The great Irish writer John McGahern did much the same with his 1974 novel The Leavetaking for similar reasons, so he's in good company. And, if I'm honest, there's much about Stow's work that reminds me of McGahern.)

Stow also claims to have cut out some of the Christian mission-station propaganda involving a "good deal of talk by the white characters about their difficulties and hopes, and even a very tepid love-interest, introduced not for its own sake but to suggest that at least two Europeans would remain committed to the Mission".

Sadly, To The Islands seems to have fallen out of print, although you might score a very cheap second-hand copy on Amazon Marketplace if you are lucky.

For another take on the same novel, please read Lisa Hill's review on ANZ LitLovers LitBlog.

Triple Choice Tuesday: Hungry Like the Woolf

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Kerry, from Hungry Like the Woolf.

Kerry, who is an attorney, grew up in rural North Carolina but now resides in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. with his partner and their daughter.

His favourite writers include Virginia Woolf, Milan Kundera, Mark Twain, Jon Dos Passos, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Camus, Jeannette Winterson, J.M. Coetzee and, as we will see below, Gina Berriault and Vladamir Nabokov.

Without further ado, here's Kerry's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favorite book: The Lights of Earth by Gina Berriault

Part of this book's appeal to me is that I feel like I discovered it, as if her works are more my own than Nabokov's or Woolf's or Coetzee's.

Gina Berriault gained some late-life fame as a short story writer, winning the PEN/Faulkner Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Women in Their Beds, but few people had read Gina Berriault's novels (novellas, technically). With her books going out of print, even fewer likely read them now. I imagine myself as one of the select, a keeper of the secret of her exceptional novelistic talents. The obscurity of Berriault's novels raises their esteem in my eyes.

This book could not have become a favorite on obscurity alone, of course. Plenty of authors deserve to be forgotten or never to have been known in the first place. Gina Berriault is not one of those.

She writes with a melancholic truth, the sting of sorrow salved by her exquisitely artful prose. While ostensibly about the death of an affair, this novel is as much about the suffering of the artist.

Berriault did not achieve much recognition until quite late in her life. Women in Their Beds was published in 1996 and she died in 1999. The fear of being forgotten permeates this book and dominates the thoughts of the main character, Ilona Lewis, whose married lover is ending their relationship. The book is more than that, too, though. It is an examination of what it means to live and die. Berriault captures the struggle for meaning and some sense of permanence in a brutally dismissive world.

"If some persons were in the light, like the ones up there on the small screen, like Martin, like the woman he loved, like all those who were embraced wherever they went, it didn't follow that all the rest were lost to the dark."


A book that changed my world: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

While this might not be the best place to start with Nabokov, it is where I started. My view of literature has never been the same. Each time I first read one of the unquestioned geniuses of literature, the standouts of their generation, it changes my world. That's why we call them geniuses, I suppose.

I have chosen Pale Fire because it is so uniquely brilliant and because it so thoroughly reordered my literary conceptions. Nabokov wrote a 999-word poem and then, in the footnotes to that poem, presents a novel. It works so much more smoothly than it sounds like it could. The poem itself has such lightly sparkling beauty that scholars still argue over whether it was written tongue-in-cheek or in earnest.

It begins: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure of the window pane"

The footnote novel is packed with mysteries to ponder, prose to admire, and humor to thrill. Altogether, Pale Fire has created impossible standards by which I now judge other literary works. I want my books intriguing. I want them funny. I want them dark. And I want them beautiful. Pale Fire is one of the greatest literary achievements I have ever had the fortune to experience. Words have never been the same for me.


A book that deserves a wider audience: Mischief by Chris Wilson

I have no idea where things went wrong for this novel, but it never seems to have built the sustaining audience it deserves.

The novel begins with an intriguing idea. Dr. Robert Jay Duckworth, a zoologist traveling in Brazil and researching amphibians, finds an abandoned infant from a forgotten tribe, the Xique Xique. None of the locals wants anything to do with baby and Dr. Duckworth, without intending it, is named the child's legal guardian. He returns to England and raises the boy as his son, Charlie.

Charlie narrates the book, telling the story of his life as he has learned of it and experienced it, not to a general reader, but to a specific "you."

The technique is interesting and happily engaging. But the joy comes from the fact that Charlie is fundamentally different from the English who surround him. He has no guile. He is honest, caring, sensitive, and earnest. He embodies every admirable quality we try to instill in our children.

Chris Wilson brilliantly examines the consequences for Charlie and, in doing so, provides delightful insight into human nature and the reality of social relations.

I am surprised the book never gained traction because, while it does have a lurking darkness, it is cleverly funny. I do not want to dissuade by comparisons to "popular" fiction, but I would have thought that, if nothing else, Mischief would have gained some of that affection the public lavishes on works like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time with its sweetly entrancing, first person narrator. It is a joy to spend time with Charlie. He is a character you will not forget. He is too original, too likable, and too much of a challenge to our conception of ourselves to fade from memory.

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Thanks, Kerry, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Kerry's choices? Have you read any of these books? I have to say I'm intrigued by all three, particular the Nabokov which I have picked up in bookstores countless times but never actually bought nor read. Perhaps it's time to rectify that...

Litty links

• In a piece in the Irish Times, Irish-born Canada-based writer Emma Donoghue explains how she developed the child narrator in her Booker longlisted Room. She says she based Jack on her own five-year-old son but with some caveats, including the fact that he would be "far more skilled in conversation that most five-year-olds, since he’s been talking to his intelligent mother non-stop for years, while other children run around with water pistols" and that he  "would have the gift of coherence".

• Sticking with the Booker longlisted books, Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap (which I reviewed back in March) is dividing opinion here in the UK. The writer India Knight said it was misognynist (apparently she wrote this in The Times, which is now cocooned behind a paywall, so I cannot link to it) but Tsiolkas, in an interview with the Guardian yesterday, has defended the book, saying "there's real love" in it.

• To celebrate the overturning of Proposition 8 in California, which banned gay marriage, last week, the Los Angeles Times has listed 20 classic works of gay literature. How many have you read?

• Speaking of gay literature, a new literary prize for gay writers has been launched in the UK. The Green Carnation Prize is for novels and memoirs by gay men published this calendar year. A shortlist will be announced in late October.

• Is there anyone out there who hasn't read Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy? I've only read the first volume and wasn't bothered enough to either review it or read the follow-ups. I like Will Self's self-mocking piece in the New Statesman about the books:

"To be fair, I've only read half of the first Millennium thriller and everyone tells me that they get better. Even so, I was shocked by quite how greyish and pulpy the prose was, with nary an involving metaphor nor even an amusing juxtaposition of two words. Instead, clichéd description is followed by actual cliché, and always there is a devilish amount of detail about clothes, about office routines, about laptops - about Swedish social services ferchrissakes. This could be because of the translation, but I doubt it."

• But before Stieg Larsson, there was Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, as Sarah Weinman explains in this piece published on The Daily Beast.

• The Huffington Post names the 15 most overrated contemporary American writers.
  There's quite a few obscure names on it, so they can't be that overrated.

• A new book reveals that Roald Dahl was a real-life James Bond-style spy. I don't think I will be reading it. I grew up with Dahl's books (and am pleased to see my five-year-old niece adores them), so don't really want to know what he got up to in his private life. Do you?

• Borders has pretty much disappeared from the UK. Could another American chain, Barnes & Noble, now disappear from the US? According to an article in the New York Times, the States' biggest book chain is up for sale.

Four winners

Thanks to everyone who entered the two competitions I ran during the week.

There were 31 entries in the competition to win a signed copy of Andrea Levy's Small Island. I used a random integer generator to chose the winner.

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

5

Timestamp: 2010-08-07 14:10:34 UTC

That means the prize goes to The Book Whisperer, who was the 5th person to comment!

There were 38 entries in the next competition in which I offered to send three of you a book of your choice, provided the title was available at the Book Depository and had been reviewed by me in the past.

Again, I used a random integer generator to chose the winner.

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

25	3	11

Timestamp: 2010-08-07 14:15:58 UTC

That means a copy of Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada is going to Stujallen, a copy of The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris is going to Mike S, and a copy of Memoir by John McGahern is going to Alison!

Congratulations to everyone! I will be emailing you shortly to find out your postal address.

'Couples' by John Updike

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 464 pages; 2007.

I had not expected to like John Updike's 1968 novel, Couples, so I was pleasantly surprised to find it one of the most intense reading experiences I've enjoyed in a long while.

I stupidly thought I wouldn't like it because I'd formulated the completely wrong impression about Updike as a writer. Without having read him before, I had pigeon-holed him as one of those white male authors (think Philip Roth, John Irving, Norman Mailer et al) of a particular priviledged background that penned misogynist novels with self-indulgent, navel-gazing tendencies. I should have known that that misguided view might come back and bite me one day.

Couples is an amazingly voyeuristic look at small-town life in New England in 1962/63. It's the era of Betty Friedan's ground-breaking Feminine Mystique (which, by the way, I have been reading slowly, off and on, for the past five months), the African-American civil rights movement, the Cold War and President Kennedy. But it's the sexual liberation provided by the contraceptive pill which really gives this book its central focus.

Here, in the small town of Tarbox, we have 10 couples fending off boredom by discreetly and not-so discreetly swapping partners. Whether it be at dinner parties, ski-trips or during working hours, this exclusive set of thoroughly detestable characters are in and out of each other's beds on a constant basis. These are the people that put the swing into the swinging sixties, if you get my meaning.

But despite all the numerous bed-hopping and lust-filled shenanigans, it is the affair between the red-haired Dutch-immigrant builder, Piet Hanemas, and the blonde mother-to-be, Foxy Whitman, that is the lynch-pin of the story. Throwing caution to the wind, the pair's antics lead to terrible repercussions that have long-lasting impacts on the people around them...

Despite the somewhat seedy subject matter, this is a thoroughly entertaining romp at a time when social mores where being challenged on every level. It's no coincidence that the people of Tarbox live in the shadow of a Congregational Church and that each character in the novel has an opinion about religion, whether Catholic, Jewish, protestant or atheist. Interestingly, the most religious of characters, Piet, who attends church regularly, is also the most promiscuous, while his wife, the non-believer, is the most prudish.

What I liked about this novel was not so much the insights into a particular set of Baby Boomers grappling with the banality of domestic life, but the ways in which Updike scatters snippets of historical detail -- the sinking of the USS Thresher, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's assassination -- throughout. More than once I was reminded of the current TV series Mad Men, if not in physical setting then at least in tone and time period.

And having expected Updike to be sexist and misogynist, I was surprised to find his female characters all believable and well-drawn. That most of them felt empty and lacking purpose to their lives certainly rings true with Betty Friedan's theory about women being disaffected by domesticity at the time.

All in all, Couples was a wonderful read, helped in part by consuming the entire book in the space of 36 hours in order to have it read in time for my book group! I wouldn't recommend doing it that way, because this is a rich, wordy read that needs time to properly digest, but it worked for me and made it all the more intense.

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

• Simon's review

Book giveaway: there are 3 up for grabs

I promised there would be competitions to celebrate posting my 500th review, and here's another one for you.

In this competition, there'll be three lucky winners, and the prize is totally up to you.

Here's the deal. You can choose any book that I've reviewed, and if it's still in print and available to purchase from thebookdepository, then it could be yours.

Here's how to enter.

1. Check if The Book Depository delivers to your country. If so, you’re eligible to enter.

2. Browse my reviews and decide which book you'd like to win.

3. Check that the book is available to purchase at The Book Depository. If not go back to step 2.

4. Leave me a comment below and tell me the title of the book you've chosen. Please note, you can only enter once.

Entries close at 12-noon GMT on Saturday August 7. I will then select three winners using an online random number generator (or some such).

In the meantime, don't forget to enter my other competition, in which you could win a signed copy of Andrea Levy's Small Island, if you haven't already done so. That competition closes at the same time.

Good luck!

Portrait of a book blogger as a conversationalist, or how I agreed to speak in public about literature with the German equivalent of Ian McEwan - eek!

If you follow the new independent publishing house @PeirenePress on Twitter, or have signed up for their new monthly newsletter (which you can do via the Peirene Press website if you haven't already), then you will know I'm making my "literary stage" debut next month*.

I will be "in conversation with" German author FC Delius and his translator Jamie Bulloch at the Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green at 7pm on Friday September 17. The evening is totally free and includes a glass of wine. (Mind you, I wouldn't count on there being any alcohol left by the time the evening kicks off, because I may well have quaffed it all in order to work up some Dutch courage. Did I tell you I was nervous?)

I will admit that I nearly fell over when Peirene's founding publisher, Meike Ziervogel, asked me to take part in the event. But after mulling it over for a week or two, and then very quickly reading Mr Delius' novel Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman to make sure I liked it (and I did -- it's a very beautiful, moving story and I'll be reviewing it shortly), I feel quite flattered that Meike would even think to invite me: I'm just a book blogger, after all!

So, if you live in London or are visiting in mid-September, please do come along. It will be lovely to have your support. (Simon from Savidge Reads is already threatening to bring a banner along, but it's the hecklers I'm more worried about!)

In the meantime, do keep your eye out for the book. It gets published on September 1, but you can buy it direct from the publisher now if you take out a three-book subscription (which is what I did a few months back). By the way, that's not me plugging the subs thing, but it's how I discovered Peirene and I think it's important to support small presses whichever way you can.

Oh, and if anyone has some bright ideas on how to approach the conversation, or if you have any questions you'd like me to ask the author, please do let me know in the comment box below. Meanwhile, I might ask my GP for a referral to a psychiatrist... because surely I've got rocks in my head to agree to this whole shebang.

 

* You will also know my real name, having had to come out from behind my kimbofo moniker for the sake of sounding a bit more "professional". If you are one of my staffers or ex-staffers, or went to school with me, or worked with me in the past, or know me from way back when, or are related to me but have never joined the dots, please remember I employed a pseudonym for a reason. In other words, let's not talk about this in public and just pretend this whole unveiling of my real identity never happened, okay? ;-)

Triple Choice Tuesday: Paperback Reader

Welcome to Triple Choice Tuesday. This is where I ask some of my favourite bloggers and other bookish bods to share the names of three books that mean a lot to them. The idea is that it might raise the profile of certain books and introduce you to new titles and new bloggers.

Today's guest is Claire from Paperback Reader.

I know Claire personally, as we both belong to the same book group.

Originally from Glasgow, Claire now lives in London with her long-term boyfriend. She tells me she's "looking forward to the pitter-patter of tiny paws and a ring on my finger". A literature graduate, she's doggedly pursuing an elusive career in book publishing.

She loves red wine, good food and, of course, books.

Without further ado, here's Claire's Triple Choice Tuesday selections:

 

A favourite book: The Group by Mary McCarthy

Whenever I am asked to name a favourite book, I feel as if I am on the spot like a rabbit in the headlights. Narrow my favourite books down to only one?! It's a near-impossible feat but I went for the less obvious favourite and one of the most recent book to acquire the status, and chose The Group.

Reissued late last year by my favourite publisher, Virago, The Group revolves around eight female friends and recent graduates of Vassar in 1930s New York. Intelligent, satirical and exceedingly witty, The Group is a saga that is as educational as it is entertaining.

The novel was highly progressive in its open treatment of motherhood, sex, contraception, and marriage and also discusses Socialism and Communism, Lesbianism, race and mental illness amongst the socio-economic backdrop of 1930s New York. The women are mainly affluent and educated but, as women, are limited and stifled in society; McCarthy provides a historical insight into my favourite period, and evokes it exceptionally well.

 

A book that changed my world: Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

Anyone who knows me or is familiar with my blog won't be surprised that I have chosen an Angela Carter novel. Nights at the Circus was my first foray in Carter's lush prose and one year later I was writing my Master's thesis on her work; the book literally changed my world and it has very much remained a favourite in my esteem and affection. My love for Carter is entirely as a result of having read this book.

Set in 1899 London and moving to St Petersburg and Siberia, Nights at the Circus is a carnivalesque, feminist and magical realist novel. Fevvers, the novel's protagonist, is a celebrated winged aerialist and leading attraction at a circus. Hatched from an egg, Fevvers sprouted wings when she was menstruating and a virgin raised in a brothel; she is Cockney, larger-than-life -- literally -- at over six feet in her stocking-feet and peroxide blonde.

 

A book that deserves a wider audience: Drop City by T.C. Boyle

A university lecturer of mine recommended this book to me and when he suggested a book, I paid attention (previous suggestions included Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, The Driver's Seat by Muriel Spark and the majority of the Irish literary canon). I love Boyle's writing and not merely because we share a surname.

Drop City would make a fantastic reading choice for summer and its front cover is a hoot. The story is set in a 1970s Californian commune, where the inhabitants live a relaxed existence, practising free love and doing drugs. Following a series of ugly events, the group move north to Alaska, planning on recreating their commune there and cultural clashes with the locals ensue.

I read Drop City about five years ago and it has remained vividly in my memory; Boyle's writing is stunning and he evoked lifestyles and landscapes unfamiliar to me with apparent ease. I think his work in general should be more well-known but I highly recommend this novel.

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Thanks, Claire, for taking part in my Triple Choice Tuesday!

What do you think of Claire's choices? Have you read any of these books? I've been dying to read The Group ever since I spied Betty Draper from Mad Men reading it! And it was Claire who encouraged me to try my first Angela Carter earlier this year, so Nights at the Circus has gone on my wishlist. I'm also a TC Boyle fan, but have not read Drop City: it sounds like I need to rectify that, too.

Book giveaway: win a signed copy of 'Small Island'

Last month you may remember I went all weak at the knees when I saw Joseph O'Connor at the London Literature Festival.

What I didn't tell you was that the following night I also saw Andrea Levy. I had a spare ticket so dragged Simon from Savidge Reads along with me.

I wasn't sure what to expect, because seeing authors in the flesh for the first time is a bit like when you discover what a radio announcer looks like: the face never matches the voice. But Ms Levy was delightfully witty, intelligent and passionate about her craft. I loved that when she did her reading from The Long Song, a book I am yet to read, she did all the character's voices. (Simon tells me she does her own audio books -- I'm not in the least surprised, she certainly knows how to make a story come alive.)

After we heard her speak, we joined the queue to get our books signed. Now I could be ultra-selfish and whack them up on eBay and make myself a bit of dosh (!!), but no, in honour of my 500th review, I thought I'd give one of you the chance to win a signed copy of Small Island.

Just in case you don't believe me, here's a snapshot of her signature (taken on my phone, so not particularly clear).

To be in with a chance of winning this book simply leave a comment below by 12-noon GMT on Saturday August 7. 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.