Reading Matters

'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 240 pages; 2009. Free copy for our Book Group courtesy of the publisher.

I first read Sylvia Plath's one and only novel, The Bell Jar, as a young 20-something, when I was hugely unsure of my place in the world. Indeed, I'd graduated but my career prospects were thwarted by a massive recession (it was 1991) and I was making ends meet by working part-time in a book shop. Reading The Bell Jar was a rewarding experience, because the main character, Esther Greenwood, was also coming to terms with her place in the world -- or not coming to terms with it, as it turned out. As I read about Esther sliding further and further into depression, I realised my life wasn't so bad after all. But I did find The Bell Jar very dark and bleak.

Reading the book for the second time round, almost 18 years later, I was struck by how little of it I remembered. And it also seemed far less depressing. Indeed, there were many moments when I laughed out loud. Here's a case in point: Esther and a colleague catch a yellow cab back to their hotel after a party, and this is what ensues:

The cab driver took the corners with such momentum that we were thrown together first on one side of the back seat and then on the other. Each time one of us felt sick, she would lean over quietly as if she had dropped something and was picking it up off the floor, and the other one would hum a little and pretend to be looking out the window.

But I digress... For those of you who are unaware of the storyline, it goes something like this: It is 1953. Esther Greenwood is a first-rate student from rural America who wins a college scholarship along with the opportunity to spend a month in New York city as an intern on a fashion magazine. But during her time in Manhattan with 11 other young female interns, Esther slowly realises that she can no longer define herself by her academic accomplishments. The world, as she knows it, is coming to an end and she doesn't quite know how to handle it. Or, as she describes it, she "felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks".

When she returns home, she discovers that her application to join a writing course over the summer has been rejected, and depression sets in.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree in the story [that she had read].
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

The phrase that comes to mind here is "paralysed by choice". Indeed, as the summer drags on, Esther becomes more dejected, lost and depressed, not helped by the absence of her medical student boyfriend who has been sent to a sanatorium to recover from tuberculosis. Not that she thinks much of him anyway...

Before long, Esther is seeing a psychiatrist and admitted to an asylum. A string of failed, one might say half-hearted, suicide attempts follow, as does a course of electro-shock treatment. It all feels very bleak and depressing...although the ending is relatively upbeat.

I'll admit that I loved the first third of the book, set in New York, much more than the sections covering her psychiatric experiences. Perhaps it's the beautiful writing and the pitch-perfect descriptions of Manhattan where "the city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking" or maybe I just identified with Esther's cynicism, her refusal to get caught-up in the shallowness of the fashion industry, the endless parties, the free gifts. She wants something more meaningful even if she hasn't quite figured out what that might comprise...

The latter two-thirds of the book comes across a bit like one long whinge-fest. There was part of me that wanted to grab Esther by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. Sure, her aspirations aren't being taken seriously, but why not prove what you can achieve before giving up because you don't see the point of it all? But then, it's hard to fully comprehend what it must have been like to be a woman in the 1950s, when society simply expected you to get married, stay at home and raise a family. How would an intellectual, creative woman, deal with making such compromises?

The Bell Jar was Plath's only novel, because she killed herself a few weeks after it was published in 1963. Obviously, one can't help wondering how much autobiographical detail fills its pages. Sadly, we will never know.

----

This book was chosen by Simon as part of our London-based face-to-face book group. It was a great choice. Here's some other posts written about the book by fellow members, which I'll update as they are published:

• Simon's thoughts

• Claire's thoughts

• Novel Insights' review

'Snuff' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 208 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

I'll be perfectly frank: I did not expect to like Chuck Palahniuk's latest paperback release because of the sordid subject matter. I wasn't sure I would be entirely comfortable reading about an aging porn star attempting to break the world record for serial fornication with 600 men on camera.

But Palahniuk delivers such an extraordinarily funny story that you can't help but laugh your way through it. And before long you realise that this isn't a novel glorifying pornography. If anything it sends it up, pokes fun at the ridiculous nature of it and highlights how warped you would have to be to participate in a gang-bang that is being filmed for public consumption.

The story is told from the perspectives of three men - Mr 72, Mr 137 and Mr 600 - as they wait in the queue for their turn in front of the camera. Sheila, the wrangler who runs the green room, also narrates her side of the story.

If you think this sounds like the real life story of Annabel Chong, the pornographic actress who became famous by engaging in 251 sex acts with about 70 men over a ten-hour period, setting a world record in 1995, then you'd be right. But Palahniuk ratchets things up a gear or two, and makes the whole concept a terrible macabre joke by suggesting that the exercise, which might just kill Cassie Wright, will act as a launching pad for the careers of 600 desperate men happy to do anything to get in the history books. Or, as Mr 600 so aptly puts it:

Cassie Wright will be dead, but her backlist of videos, everything from the Ass Menagerie to her all-facial compilation Catch Her in the Eye to the classic A Separate Piece will turn into solid gold. Bang the Bum Slowly. Boxed collector-edition sets. The eternal Marilyn Monroe sacrificial goddess of adult entertainment.

As you would expect for a novel of this type, the language is crude and not for the faint-hearted. And whilst the subject matter is taboo, Palahniuk makes the history of it wholly fascinating, scattering intriguing and little-known facts throughout, such as Sheila's claim that Hitler invented the first blow-up sex doll, which, as my own internet research has revealed, is actually true:

During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure, and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could go into wide distribution.

Quite clearly this isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but having read pretty much all of Palahniuk's previous work I wasn't going to let this one slip by. I very much enjoyed it. And the ending is an absolute riotous cracker!

'To Siberia' by Per Petterson

 Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 248 pages; 2008. Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born.

Prize-winning Norwegian novelist Per Petterson has become one of my favourite authors in recent years.

His much-lauded Out Stealing Horses, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2006 and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2007, and the less well-known In the Wake, which won the Brage Prize in 2000 (before it was translated into English), are both beautiful but devastating reads. To Siberia, first published in 1996 but only recently translated into English, is similarly exquisite.

This one is set in a provincial town in Jutland, Denmark, almost "as far as it was possible to travel from Copenhagen and still have streets to walk along". It opens in the 1930s and is narrated by a young girl growing up on a farm with her elder brother, Jesper, whom she adores because "he does things that are original", a devoutly Christian mother, a carpenter father and a hard-working, hard-drinking grandfather.

There is little plot of which to speak, although the story could be loosely described as a coming-of-age tale, because we follow our unnamed narrator from a shy six-year-old, scared of the stone lions on a neighbour's property, to a 20-something emotionally embittered woman embarking on a life of her own. (Confusingly, the first person narrative is told from her perspective as a 60 year-old looking back on her life.)

The picture that emerges over the course of time is one largely of hardship as her father "works his way downwards", moving the family into a cramped flat over a dairy when he is shut out from his parent's farm. Here she must share a bedroom with Jesper (later, she is shocked to learn there are rumours they sleep together) and is told by her mother that she "broods too much".

Sustaining her through this pinched existence are her dreams of Siberia, a place she longs to visit with "a sky and a light as from the dawn of the world", and the love for her brother, a ribald, daring character, who later joins the resistance movement when the Nazis invade Denmark.

Later, as a young adult, she moves to Copenhagen and then drifts from Stockholm to Oslo, and fills her days working, first as a telephone operator and later a waitress, and ekes out her nights in grim promiscuity. There is a definite sense of loss, of melancholia, of deep aching sadness, perhaps best described by the absence of Jesper in her life:

He has gone to Morocco, and I have come to this town at the very end of the fjord where everything was gray and green on the way in on the boat, and then nothing but gray for days and weeks.

The ending is an unbearably sad one, typical of Petterson's previous novels, and even writing this review, some three weeks after having read the book, my throat aches with the thought of it. To Siberia is a beautiful, bleak novel, one that makes you see the world in a slightly different light after you reach the final page.

As an aside, I loved reading about a part of the world with which I am vaguely familiar, especially the township of Skagen, which nestles on the northern-most tip of Jutland. Petterson's descriptions are particularly evocative, although I have no experience of a cold so bitter it freezes the sea. You can see my own photographs of the region here and here and here.

'The Monster of Florence' by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Non-fiction - hardcover; Virgin Books; 336 pages; 2009. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Last year I read an amazing true-crime book called The Vienna Woods Killer: A Writer's Double Life by John Leake about a journalist who reported on the brutal murders he himself had committed. It was one of those "truth is stranger than fiction" books -- and I loved it.

The Monster of Florence is another true-crime book hugely reminiscent of The Vienna Woods Killer. A collaboration between an American crime thriller writer and an Italian investigative journalist, the book traces a series of brutal double-murders in and around the hills of Florence between 1968 and 1985 and then, in a bizarre twist of fate, reveals how the authors themselves became suspects. The fiction writer, Douglas Preston, is interrogated, accused of being an accessory to murder and of planting false evidence, and told to leave the country; the journalist, Mario Spezi, is thrown into jail and accused of being the Monster of Florence himself.

The book opens with Preston explaining how he moved to a stone farmhouse in Florence with his wife and two children in August 2000. He planned to write a murder mystery set in Italy, but when he met Mario Spezi, a local crime reporter (in order to learn more about Italian police procedures) he discovered something that made him change his mind. Apparently a serial killer, dubbed the Monster of Florence, had murdered two young lovers in the olive grove outside Preston's front door. His interest was piqued: perhaps it might be more interesting to write a true-crime book.

The first half of The Monster of Florence tells the story of the seven couples -- fourteen people in total -- murdered while making love in the hills surrounding Florence by a serial killer who has never been found. As a crime reporter, Spezi made a career out of investigating the murders and their subsequent police investigations, and had garnered unparalleled knowledge and expertise on the crimes. But he also became a thorn in the side of the police, often showing up weaknesses in their investigative procedures and calling their credibility into question.

The second half takes on a new twist, explaining how the authors, working in tandem, had discovered new evidence which they believed pinpointed the killer.  The police, already annoyed that Spezi was continually stealing their thunder, turned the investigation onto their detractors, with devastating consequences.

This is a rip-roaring read, more exciting than any crime thriller Preston could make up himself, and it barrels along at lightning quick pace. I overshot two lunch hours because I was so caught up in this too-weird-to-be-true story.

But, more importantly, this is a book that highlights the dark underbelly of Italian society and the shadowy, often corrupt world of the Carabinieri, which polices both the military and civilian populations, the Italian police and the judiciary. It's also an important book about freedom of speech and how one journalist put his life on the line because he believed so strongly that the truth must come out.

The Monster of Florence, which hit the New York bestseller list upon publication in the USA earlier this year, will be published in the UK on January 29, 2009.

'The Dogs of Babel' by Carolyn Parkhurst

Fiction - paperback; Back Bay Books; 264 pages; 2003.

This is a truly original, off-beat story by first-time novelist Carolyn Parkhurst.

Published in the UK under the title Lorelei's Secret, I mooched this on a whim from a reader in Switzerland. "I really liked this book," she wrote in a note tucked inside the front cover, "It was much better than I expected." To which I have to concur.

The story is about Paul, a 40-something college professor on a quest to discover whether his wife's death was an accident or suicide: Lexy had fallen out of a tree in the couple's back garden while he was at work. The only witness to the tragic event was their dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback called Lorelei.

Paul, who teaches linguistics, decides to embark on a strange scientific experiment: he plans to teach Lorelei to talk so that she can tell him what she saw on that fateful day. His decision to carry out such a plainly absurd exercise earns him the wrath of friends and colleagues, but Paul firmly believes it is the only way he can solve "certain anomalies" of Lexy's death. These anomalies involve a strange set of "clues": the couple's vast collection of books have been rearranged so they are no longer in their normal positions, and on the day of Lexy's death Lorelei had been fed a 20-ounce steak that Paul had been planning to barbecue that night on the grill.

Maybe these events mean nothing. After all, I am a grieving man, and I am trying very hard to find some sense in my wife's death. But the evidence I have discovered is sufficiently strange to make me wonder what really happened that day, whether it was really a desire for apples that led my sweet wife to climb to the top of that tree. Lorelei is my witness, not just to Lexy's death but to all the events leading up to it. She watched Lexy move through her days and her nights. She was there for the unfolding of our marriage from its first day to its last. Simply put, she knows things I don't. I feel I must do whatever I can to unlock that knowledge.

As crazy as the premise of this book might sound, the story seems entirely plausible throughout -- there's no need to suspend belief or to wonder if the author might have been taking hallucinogenic drugs when she wrote it! You become truly convinced of Paul's faith in his experiment even though its folly is clear from the outset.

Putting aside the kookiness of the subject matter, The Dogs of Babel is actually a very fine portrait of a marriage and the way in which ordinary people react when thrust into extraordinary situations. The style is hugely reminiscent of Anne Tyler, an author who has an uncanny ability to write about daily life and small-scale domestic dramas so that each moment, each character is imbued with emotional importance.

And there are touches of Chuck Palahniuk, too, namely in the surreal nature of Paul's quest and his eventual run-in with a secret cult that believes it is possible to make dogs talk.

But the real beauty of the book is Parkhurst's steady drip-feed of information which she supplies via a series of flashbacks in which Paul reminisces about his wife: how they met and fell in love; what it was like settling into marriage; and how the first cracks began to appear in their near-perfect relationship. While we only ever get to experience their marriage through Paul's eyes, it doesn't take long to see that everything is not quite as it seems.

The pleasure of this clever, emotional and occasionally winsome novel is trying to work out what really happened to Lexy long before Paul does. A love story and mystery all rolled into one, I read it in two sittings and enjoyed every moment.

'In the Wake' by Per Petterson

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 202 pages; 2007. Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born.

Judging by the amount of Scandinavian crime fiction hitting our shelves these days, anyone would be forgiven for thinking that this was the only genre Scandinavian writers were capable of creating. Thank goodness, then, for Per Petterson. This Norwegian writer has penned one short-story collection and six novels, although only two have been translated into English (a third, In Siberia, is due out at the end of the year) and they are as far from crime thrillers as you can imagine.

The beautiful, introspective Out Stealing Horses was published to critical acclaim in its native Norway in 2003, but it didn't hit the big time until it was translated into English and scooped the Independent Foreign Prize for Fiction in 2006. Suddenly Norway's best kept literary secret was out of the bag and English-language readers like me clamoured for more. Cue the translation of In the Wake, a novel that predates Out Stealing Horses by three years, but which feels more accomplished and -- if it is possible -- more touching, more painful and more despondent.

Like Trond in Out Stealing Horses, In the Wake features a male narrator trying to come to terms with painful events from his past.

The book opens with Arvid, a 43-year-old divorced father of two, standing outside a bookshop where he once worked. He is confused and disoriented, and can't understand why his hands are grazed and why it hurts so much to breath. And then he remembers the one tragic event that he has been trying to escape for the past six years: the deaths of his parents and two younger brothers in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster...

What follows is a story told stream-of-consciousness style as Arvid pieces together those missing years and looks back on the strained relationship he had with his father, a very physically fit and strong man who had little respect for Arvid's love of books and writing, and his older brother, the only member of his family who was not on board the boat that fateful night.  (Tellingly, his mother and his two younger siblings rarely enter his thoughts).

When his 46-year-old brother announces he's about to get a divorce and then tries to kill himself by drinking "a bottle of port and a hundred Sarotex", Arvid is forced to confront the reasons why the two have grieved in different ways. This memory, of the pair sailing in a boat with their father, says it all:

I turned and stood there looking straight across the fjord to Oslo while the ice floe gently rocked, and my brother was staring stiffly back at the rowing boat and at my father, and I think that is the difference between my brother and me, that in spite of size and age he always looked back while I looked straight ahead, and this is the way it has always been.

And this account, told to a nurse, sums up how the two brothers viewed the tragedy from different perspectives:

And then I tell her of the discussions we have had since then, my brother and I, about how they died, my two younger brothers and my mother and my father, and I have said it again and again, that they were asleep and died from the smoke and never knew what happened to them, while he is convinced they were awake and tried to get out, and then could not because the flames were so fierce at that particular place in the boat and the smoke was so thick, and he cannot stop thinking about what their thoughts were just then, what their last feelings were, and I have said it does not do any good to go on thinking like that.

In the Wake is a book about loss -- loss of family members, loss of dreams, loss of self -- and how we handle it. But it's also a book about family relationships, in particular between fathers and sons, and how these bonds, good and bad alike, do not break, even in death.

It's a quietly devastating read, but one that is not without hope. Arvid may be reclusive but there are touching scenes in this book -- between the Kurdish neighbours he befriends and the attractive woman across the road with whom he develops a small love affair -- that indicate he is ready to tentatively re-enter the land of the living after a long period of bereavement. And there's the odd witty scene that breaks up the unbearable sadness of the novel.

I found myself unable to stop thinking about this book whenever I put it down. Despite the narrative comprising an endless succession of disjointed memories, Petterson manages to weave them together seamlessly, so you feel like you have entered someone else's dream thoughts. That is quite a stunt to pull off, though whether this says more about Petterson's writing style or Anne Born's translation, I do not know. Whatever the case, In the Wake is a highly recommended read and one I won't forget in a hurry.

'A House in the Country' by Jocelyn Playfair

Fiction - paperback; Persephone Books; 264 pages; 2002.

There's nothing quite like reading a Persephone Book: the weighty feel of them in the hand, the beautiful endpapers (pictured above), the creamy pages and the strangely old-fashioned Baskerville font feels like such a delicious treat. I'd been saving this one up for a special "occasion". I figured it would be perfect holiday reading, curled up by the fire in a little cottage in Cornwall, free from the usual schedules and appointments that clutter up my life. Alas, A House in the Country was not the kind of book to be read with the brain in neutral. It's a deeply philosophical story to mull over and think about. Under normal circumstances I am sure I would have loved it. As a holiday read it failed to win me over.

Set in England in 1942, during the fall of Tobruk, this is a war novel told from a women's perspective. But, more importantly, it's a war novel that does not interpret events because, as Persephone points out in its catalogue, it was written in 1944 when the outcome of the Second World War was still uncertain. So, in essence, the flavour of the book is entirely authentic, a kind of postcard from the past that describes what life was like for those in England who were far removed from the battlefields of Europe.

The central character, Cressida Chance, is 38-year-old widow who runs a grand Georgian house in the country. Here she has numerous paying house guests whom she entertains, feeds and looks after, including her formidable elderly aunt, who visits regularly from London, and Tori, a gentleman from an unidentified European country, who has fled the war with nothing more than the clothes on his back.

Throughout the course of the novel Cressida, who is the mother of a young boy, agonises over the causes of war.

Were humans incapable of happiness, or was it that happiness itself was an invention, a sort of spur, created by man's instinctive desire to have something to encourage him through a life of drudgery? Could it be that this -- this mass frustration -- what a hideous expression, she thought -- was a fundamental cause of the appalling mess humanity had made of human life?

Similarly she bemoans her fellow countrymen for their indifference to the war. She feels the English are leading selfish lives and are too sheltered from the reality of the horrors happening on the Continent.

People would not give up small personal comforts, they would not give up the privacy of their homes, they would not give up their amusements, their games, their use of the car when a bus travelled the same road, they would not give up their servants, they would not even give up making toast by electricity until these things were taken from them by force of law. Most of Europe and a great part of Asia had had everything, even life, taken from them by force alone. The totality of their state of war had been violently thrust upon them. The English, by the mercy of God and the miraculous gallantry of a few young men, had been saved from the same fate by the skin of their teeth. But still, still they remained, those people who wouldn't 'give nothing up till it was took from them'.

Even when six bombs drop on her village one Sunday night -- the first air raid that the village had endured -- Cressida still feels that it has not  properly woken the English up to the life and death situation facing their European counterparts.

But the story does not revolve entirely around Cressida and her constant agonising over the war. There is a separate storyline centred on Charles Valery, a military man who survives the sinking of the Alice Corrie by floating on a lifeboat for more than 15 days. Charles has a special place in Cressida's heart -- even though he is not her husband -- but to say anything further would spoil the plot for any potential readers.

In essence A House in the Country is an insightful, intelligent novel that grapples with the bigger questions of war. In some places it reads like an essay -- a little too preachy, a little too earnest -- which might go some way to explain why it does not make the easiest of holiday reads. But if you're in the mood for something weighty and thought-provoking then this could be the book for you.

'The Tenderness of Wolves' by Stef Penney

Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 466 pages; 2007.

When Laurent Jammet, a French settler, is found brutally murdered in his shack in the frontier township of Dove River a whole chain of events is set in motion.

It is 1867 and life on the edge of the Canadian wilderness is tough. It's even tougher when you decide to hunt the killer by trekking through the Arctic snow, which is what Mrs Ross, an immigrant from the Scottish Highlands, decides to do when her teenage son, Francis, is accused of the crime.

But this is more than one woman's tale. There are stories within stories in this cleverly crafted novel, which scored Stef Penney the Costa Book of the Year in 2006. We meet a whole cast of divergent characters, each of whom has their own reasons for finding the murderer.

There is Parker, a half-breed Cherokee, who is arrested for the crime but later escapes and helps Mrs Ross on her trek; John Scott, a wealthy landowner who runs a dry goods store, and is privy to local gossip; Andrew Knox, the elderly magistrate, and his two daughters, the beautiful Susannah and the plain but intelligent Maria; Donald Moody, the young somewhat green Company employee who is charged with investigating the crime, along with his colleagues Mackinley, the factor of Fort Edgar, who has a penchant for taking the law into his own hands, and Jacob, a half-breed who serves as Donald's bodyguard; and Thomas Sturrock, an old journalist, who once befriended the dead man and seems intent on finding a special bone carving that he feels should be willed to him.

To complicate matters further, there are two sub-plots running throughout this book. The first involves the mysterious disappearance of two teenage girls 15 years earlier. Amy and Eve Seton, daughters of the local doctor, went on a picnic with their friend Cathy but were never seen again. The second involves Line, a Norwegian immigrant, who lives in a religious settlement north of Dove River but wishes to escape with her children and her lover.

All these characters and storylines combine to create a rather powerful if somewhat disjointed narrative. This is further complicated by Mrs Ross telling her side of the story in first-person while everyone else takes it in turn, chapter by chapter, to have theirs narrated in the third-person. I'm not sure this narrative approach entirely works, especially when it comes to the climax which is told from so many points of view it loses its immediate impact.

The greatest failing, in my opinion, is the lack of resolution in several narrative threads, which weakens the novel and leaves the reader slightly frustrated when they finally get to the last page.

But Penney's writing style, on a whole, is confident and perfectly captures frontier life. Her descriptions of the snowy wilderness and the resultant isolation and loneliness are pitch-perfect. Perhaps that's why this book has been so lauded, as you'd be hard pressed to read another debut novel that so expertly conveys an unfamiliar world in such an immediately familiar way. But personally, I just felt The Tenderness of Wolves lacked the narrative hook to keep me reading -- and judging by all the glowing accounts online I may, just possibly, be the only person to feel this way.

'Rant' by Chuck Palahniuk

 
Fiction - hardcover; Jonathan Cape; 336 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite authors. He has a distinctive, often experimental, style that mixes black humour with scathing satire. The result is often a very funny, completely surreal, rollicking good read. But his new novel -- subtitled The Oral History of Buster Casey -- fails to deliver the usual offbeat and inspired narrative I have come to expect.

Rant is essentially a story about a now-dead wayward weirdo -- Buster L "Rant" Casey -- who is responsible for an urban plague of rabies and other "pranks" across America. It is set in a technologically advanced dystopian future in which people are separated into two distinct groups -- daytimers and nighttimers.  The nighttimers, who come out when it is dark, spend a large proportion of their time Party Crashing. This is a sport in which participants deliberately cause car accidents in a rather destructive and surreal version of a demolition derby.

The book is structured as a series of interviews with people who knew Rant before he killed himself. This forms a rather disjointed oral biography in which a vast array of characters reminisce about Rant's short but violent life (he died during a Party Crashing event that was screened live on television), analyse his character flaws and personality, speculate about his motives for committing suicide and debate whether his upbringing was to blame for his bad behaviour.

This mock-documentary treatment is a brave and interesting twist on Palahniuk's usual temporal (told backwards) narrative style, but in my opinion I don't think it truly works. It comes across as too disjointed and too bitty to build up any narrative flow so that it was a very real struggle to turn the pages.

While Palahniuk introduces some interesting and often hilarious concepts -- I love that Party Crashers  recognise each other by dressing their cars with "Just Married" paraphernalia while participants wear bridal gowns -- the novel's flawed structure is a major distraction. This is a shame, because Rant makes some important points about contemporary society, including our obsession with fame, video games and materialism, just to name a few.

If you have not read a Palahniuk novel before, I would not suggest starting with this one, if only because I think it lacks narrative drive. But all the others in his back catalogue -- many of which are reviewed on this site -- are definitely worth pursuing.

'Out Stealing Horses' by Per Petterson

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 264 pages; 2006. Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born.

This is a delightful, thought-provoking and ethereal book by an author the Independent describes as "one of Norway's finest living writers". It's a relatively simple story tinged with nostalgia about a 67-year-old man's remembrance of things past and how events in the summer of 1948 shaped the rest of his life.

The narrator, Trond, is a widower who has lost touch with his children. He is living the life of a recluse in an isolated part of Norway with his faithful dog Lyra. By a strange coincidence his only neighbour, another elderly man, whom he stumbles upon by chance, is someone he has not seen since that fateful summer. This brings some painful memories to the surface and forces Trond to recall what happened all those years ago.

Back in 1948 Trond and his father left Oslo to spend a summer in a cabin in the woods not far from the Swedish border. Here Trond hangs out with Jon -- a tearaway also holidaying in the area with his family -- who encourages him to go 'out stealing horses', a euphemism for riding the local farmer's horses without permission. But then tragedy strikes Jon's family and the rest of the summer becomes a turning point in 15-year-old Trond's life.

Through a series of painful but carefully realised incidents, Trond discovers what it is to grow up, to fall in love, to grieve. He also finds out that life is fragile and not always as straightforward as it seems, that adults sometimes keep secrets and that those closest to you can also betray you.

Essentially, this is a coming-of-age story, but it is written so eloquently and with such a love for Nature -- the descriptions of woods, waterways and the changing seasons is pure magic -- that the reader falls under a kind of spell and does not want the story to end. I found it a deeply atmospheric read that transported me to another time and place as if I, too, was out in the Norwegian countryside rowing down the river or riding horses bareback through the forest.

Having read this book in one sitting, I can see why Out Stealing Horses earned Per Petterson this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. It's a truly accomplished and evocative read.

'Three Dollars' by Elliot Perlman

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 368  pages; 1999.

Eddie Harnovey, a 38-year-old chemical engineer, is married to a brilliant academic with whom he has a young daughter. He has a lovely house in the suburbs, a strong moral conscience and a kind, friendly nature. He is intelligent and well educated. Why, then, is his world falling around his feet? Why is he on the brink of bankruptcy with just $3 to his name?

This is the premise behind Elliot Perlman's award-winning debut novel Three Dollars.

Essentially it charts the rise -- and spectacular fall -- of a young man, who could have had everything but looks set to lose it all, including his home and his marriage.

Set in Melbourne, Australia, during the economic rationalistic 1990s, it offers much commentary on our obsession with materialistic goods and the soulless nature of business and its pursuit of ever-increasing profit regardless of the environmental or social consequences. But it is also a look at how love can conquer all -- as long as you have more than $3 to your name.

Overall, I much enjoyed this novel, reading it in the space of two days. As I mentioned when I reviewed Perlman's Seven Types of Ambiguity earlier this year, it was refreshing to read an Australian novel set in modern times in a city I once lived and worked in.

Three Dollars is a serious book, with plenty of negative things to say about modern life, but this is tempered by a strong comedic element throughout. Some of the situations in which Eddie finds himself  border on being hilarious.

Genre-wise I'm not sure whether this book should be classed as a family drama, social realism, an environmental thriller, a love story or a black comedy. It pretty much covers all these bases with aplomb.

There were several things that grated though: the author's tendency to editorialise; his over reliance on co-incidence to move the narrative along; and the use of overly long, convoluted sentences, a kind of literary vaudeville that cluttered what was otherwise a very well written story.

All in all, a highly entertaining and intelligent read with believable characters and a rollicking good plot.

Three Dollars won the 1999 Betty Trask Prize and the 1998 Melbourne Age Book of the Year. It was made into a movie in 2005.

'The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Fiction - paperback; Bantam Classics; 272  pages; 1994.

This small tome features Charlotte Perkins Gilman's most famous story, The Yellow Wallpaper (first published in 1899), along with a selection of fiction (seven short stories and several excerpts from Herland) and non-fiction (excerpts from Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women and The Man-made World: Our Androcentric Culture).

According to the blurb on the back of the book, the author was an "enormously influential American feminist and sociologist", so it's no surprise to find that all her writing -- fiction and non-fiction alike -- concerns itself with the state of women in the early Twentieth Century. Such themes seem surprisingly before their time, but they were written during the height of the movement for Women's Suffrage -- although women in the United States did not get full voting rights until 1920 -- when such things must have been at the forefront of female minds.

I have to be honest and say that, for the most part, I found the short stories in this collection entertaining if a little repetitive theme-wise. But I thought Herland, in which three male explorers stumble into a female utopia, was dull and laboured its point too much -- thank goodness it was only a handful of excerpts, because I don't think I could have handled the entire novel.

The non-fiction selections were interesting, if only because they so clearly showed that the author was way ahead of her time. While we might take her theories and suggestions for granted now, back then it must have been quite shocking to have a woman point out that the fate of all women "must come through a single channel and a single choice. Wealth, power, social distinction, fame -- not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter -- all must come to her through a small gold ring".

Of course, the highlight of the book, is The Yellow Wallpaper, which had been recommend to me by various bloggers ever since I confessed that I had never heard of the story before.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, although I felt it was surprisingly short, perhaps too short, because I got to the end and thought, is that it?

It's quite a harrowing and haunting read about one woman's battle with what apparently seems to be post-natal depression (unheard of at the time). Forced to stay inside for lots of rest (the worst possible thing for depression, I might add!), the narrator's mind is left to wander and before too long she begins to think that the ugly yellow wallpaper that lines her room has a life of its own... with horrific consequences. Definitely not a story to read alone in the dark of the night!

'Seven Types of Ambiguity' by Elliot Perlman

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 624  pages; 2005.

At last. A book by an Australian novelist that isn't about convicts or the pioneers or soldiers heading off to the Great War. This one is, in fact, set in modern times - or the economic rationalistic 1990s anyway.

What's more it's set in the Australian city I know best - Melbourne - at a time when I was a resident. How wonderful to recognise names and places in the pages of this well-crafted novel: I have downed many an ice-cold beer at The Esplanade Hotel, drooled over the cakes that line the bakeries along St Kilda's Acland Street, gone shopping (for books!) in Chapel Street, admired the mansions in Toorak, seen the beach at the end of Glenhuntly Road, walked along the streets of Sorrento.  

American readers, British readers will not understand this, because they are collectively spoilt by so many modern novels set in their homelands. But for me, as an Australian, I can't tell you how refreshing it was as a reader to recognise such places in the pages of a book that wasn't non-fiction. I don't know why, but it made the story all that more real, and all that more special, to me.

Seven Types of Ambiguity - if you have got past my rambling purple-prosed introduction - is described on the blurb as a "tale of obsessive love" but I think that's too simplistic a summary. It's about an unemployed teacher briefly abducting Sam, the seven-year-old son of an ex-girlfriend, and the consequences of that one misguided incident and how it impacts on so many different lives in so many different ways. It's also a psychological thriller, a court room drama, a romance, a satire, an insightful commentary on modern day existence, morals and values, and a kind of literary juggernaut that borrows the title of a well known non-fiction book by William Empson on literary criticism. Throw in politics, big business and prostitution and pretty much every genre and theme is covered here. You certainly can't complain about its breadth of scope.

The tale is told from seven different perspectives: Simon Heywood, the kidnapper; Dr Alex Klima, the psychiatrist who treats Simon but crosses a professional line to become his patient's best friend; Anna Geraghty, Simon's ex-girlfriend and mother of the kidnapped child; Joe Geraghty, Anna's stockbroker husband; Angelique, the prostitute who is Simon's current girlfriend and through some weird coincidence is also linked to Joe, one of her clients; Dennis Mitchell, an analyst and colleague of Joe's, who later hooks up with Angelique (are you following me?); and Rachael Klima, Alex's daughter, who, through another weird coincidence, becomes Sam's girlfriend. Strangely enough the only person who does not narrate his side of the story is Sam, the central figure of the book.

As one would expect from the novel's title, the theme of ambiguity is a constant. Indeed Perlman plays many literary tricks so that upon reading each new part it takes two or three pages for the reader to figure out who the new narrator is. I initially found this annoying, but I grew to like the surprise - I could never guess correctly no matter how much I thought I understood the characters.

Perlman also has his characters constantly misunderstand each other in conversation through the use of ambiguous language. For instance, when Anna is called to discuss Sam's misbehaviour at school as a result of the kidnapping, the teacher treads softly and then completely misunderstands everything Anna says to her.

'What's he done?' I asked. (...)

'Well, he's been calling out a lot...lately.'

'What do you mean, lately?' I asked the young teacher.

'Well, since the...since the troubles.'

Since 'the troubles', she had said, not being able to even say the word 'kidnapping', so afraid, as the school had informed us in a carefully worded letter, were they of saying anything that might cause us offence and provoke litigation.

'What, he's been calling out since the beginning of inter-religious hostilities in Ireland?' It was an off-the-cuff smartarse remark of the kind Simon could've made. (...)

'Pardon me?' the young teacher asked, completely at a loss.

'I'm sorry, you said since "the troubles", which is the name given to the Catholic-Protestant conflict in Ireland. I'm sorry. I was just being flippant. Things have been--'

'No, I'm sorry, for my insensitivity. Geraghty? Of course, Sam Geraghty. I have to admit I'm not always up to date with my world events. Have you lost family recently in Northern Ireland? Did Sam know the deceased directly or is it a sort of...vicarious pain? We can schedule grief counselling if you like. It can be for the whole family if you would think it would help everyone...or anyone.'

And later, when Anna wants to check whether it is true that Simon once fell in the swimming pool and was rescued from drowning by Simon, who was stalking Anna at the time, her question is misunderstood by her young son.

'Sam, you've never had an accident in the pool, have you?'

'No.'

'No, I didn't think so.'

'I haven't, really, I haven't.'

'I believe you, Sam,' I said, giving him a big hug. I didn't want to release him.

'I always go before I get in the pool.'

'What, say that again, sweetie. What did you say?'

'I don't ever do it in the pool anymore.'

The book is littered with many, many more examples - too many to list here - although I had a lot of fun spotting them as I ploughed my way through this weighty book.

But the overriding message of Seven Types of Ambiguity is the ambiguity of human relationships and how two people in a relationship can interpret that relationship in entirely different ways through the prism of their own needs, desires and maturity. For instance, we learn early on that Simon is obsessed with Anna, his ex-girlfriend, whom he is stalking. They have not been romantically involved for more than 10 years and yet he is still very much in love with her. It is creepy and skin-crawling stuff.  Later, when Anna narrates her part of the story, we get to find out exactly what she thinks of Simon - and let's just say it wasn't what I expected. So, perhaps too, Perlman is demonstrating that the reader's relationship with fictional characters can be ambiguous too.

Despite my glowing five-star review, the book isn't perfect. Sometimes the rehashing of scenes and conversations, albeit as seen from different points of view, grew wearisome. The voice and tone of each character was also remarkably similar, and some of the sentences were confusing and overly clunky. I also had trouble with the first chapter, not quite being able to work out who the narrator was, much less who he was addressing. And, finally, I found that I disliked Simon enormously despite the fact that most of the characters in this book seemed to like him very much. Why? He sounded like a pompous, too-clever-for-his-boots, obsessive, pain in the arse type of guy.

That said, I loved this amazing, brilliant and breath taking book. I read it compulsively in just under a week, no mean feat for me, a slow and plodding reader at the best of times who usually squeezes in a 30 minute session before lights out each evening. But I found the story gripping, the characterisation impressive and the literary 'acrobatics' dazzling. More please!

'Survivor' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 289 pages; 1999.

This is typical Palahniuk fare: surreal, outlandish and completely over-the-top.

This oh-so brilliant satire on fame and religion is a gripping read from the first word.

Tender Branson, the last surviving member of the Creedish Cult is at the helm of a plane about to crash over the Australian outback. Into the plane's black box flight recorder he tells his freakish tale: how he escaped the clutches of his repressive cult by becoming a hired servant in an equally repressive household; how he found himself accidentally responsible for manning a I-can-help-you-commit-suicide-phone-line (I told you it was surreal); how he became caught up in a comedy of errors that saw him transformed into the new messiah.

This weird and bizarre story is savagely funny from woe to go. The writing, hypnotic and lyrical, has that same beautiful rhythm that characterises all of Palahniuk's novels. It's brash, laugh-out-loud-funny and an enormously unconventional novel I couldn't recommend highly enough.

If you're interested in reading more Chuck Palahniuk's novels, the following books are also reviewed on Reading Matters: Invisible Monsters, Diary and Choke.

'My Sister's Keeper' by Jodi Picoult

Fiction - paperback; Coronet Books; 448 pages; 2005.

 This is an intriguing and intelligent book about a moral and ethical medical dilemma: is it OK to conceive a genetically matched child so that the baby's cord blood cells can be donated to her older sister who is sick and dying from a rare blood disorder?  And if the "designer baby" is continually "used" to help her sister, should she be able to say no at any point?

After a lifetime of medical procedures to help her sister, 13-year-old Anna decides she has had enough and takes the drastic step of suing her parents for the rights to her own body. The outfall is, obviously, emotionally powerful: anger and heartbreak mixed with confusion, pain and disbelief. The mother's initial reactions are particularly telling.

I found the subject of Picoult's eleventh novel fascinating and her writing deft and free from cloying schmaltz. Each character in the novel takes it in turn to narrate chapters, which is a great device for being able to show the range and complexity of different conflicting viewpoints. However, I found that trying to tell everyone's story only served to make an already complicated book even more complicated. And the love element between Anna's lawyer and the woman appointed to look at Anna's case just added to the confusion - I really couldn't have cared less about them.

On the whole, while My Sister's Keeper didn't really grab me by the jugular, I thought it was an interesting and entertaining read. The twist at the end, which came right out of left field, almost reduced me to tears it had such a forceful impact: it made reading the book all the more worthwhile.

'Invisible Monsters' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 304 pages; 2000.

There's nothing quite as surreal as immersing yourself in a Chuck Palahniuk book. He takes imagination to a whole new level, let me tell you. Invisible Monsters is no exception. There's enough quirky, eccentric, off-beat characters to fill an entire universe in this one.

But seriously, this is a brilliant novel full of complicated and unexpected twists and turns (although I did guess the main one well before it was revealed). It's set in the bitchy, I'm-a-bigger-whore-than-you fashion world and tells the story of a fallen glamour model who had her face horribly disfigured in an "accident" and is no longer able to speak. She hooks up with her new best friend, Brandy Alexander, and tries to start her life afresh.

The narrative jumps backwards and forwards in time (a recurrent Palahniuk trick used in his other novels), which serves to disorientate the reader in much the same way you imagine that the drugs the characters scoff throughout the story disorientate them. But because this author is such a skilled writer he deftly weaves the strands together so that you never seen the joins. And once you understand (and get used) to his literary style you immediately fall in love with it and wish you'd invented it before him.

All in all, brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Reading Matters also features reviews of Chuck Palahniuk's Diary, Choke and Survivor.

'Diary' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 272 pages; 2004.

London's Time Out magazine described this as "Part Rosemary's Baby, part the Wicker Man", which is to say it's creepy and nihilistic, shocking and disturbing.

Personally, I think a more apt description for Diary is Stephen King's Misery meets Peter Weir's The Truman Show.

Palahniuk, who is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors, has written a wonderfully entertaining novel that gripped me from start to finish.

It takes the form of a stylised diary written by Misty Marie Wilmot, who is a washed-up artist living on the happy holiday, picture-postcard pretty resort of Waytansea Island. Her husband has just tried to kill himself and now lies in a coma from which it's unlikely he'll ever recover. Her 12-year-old daughter, Tabitha, has developed an unholy alliance with Misty's mother-in-law, Grace, and life in general has turned into a fog of constant drinking, pill-popping and cigarette smoking, while working as a downtrodden, quickly aging maid at the island's tourist-ridden hotel.

Just when things couldn't get any worse, Misty has to fight off legal suits being filed against her husband who has been "hiding" rooms in houses he's refurbished. Inside the "missing" rooms he's scrawled vile and violent messages across the walls, many of them personal attacks on Misty herself.

If this story sounds weird and depressing, let me confirm that it is. But it's also hilariously, overwhelmingly, laugh-out loud FUNNY. And like any great comedy the laughs are well-timed, coming at just the right points to alleviate the heart-felt despair.

Palahniuk also does clever things with the language. Diary switches from first person to third person and back again, sometimes within the space of a paragraph, but this is never disorientating for the reader. Similarly, it jumps backwards and forwards in time, but the switches are seamless. There's a lovely, soothing rhythm to the writing. In some places it is like poetry.

And the story itself, which moves along at a heady pace, has some wonderful twists and turns. You can't help but feel sorry for poor Misty as she struggles to make sense of her life, her marriage and her real purpose for living, caught up in the devious plans of the people who are supposed to love her.

All in all, a fantastic (in all sense of the word) read.

'Vernon God Little' by DBC Pierre

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 277 pages; 2003.

Did I like this book? I honestly can't say. It's certainly weird. And it's very wacky.

It's a bit like Catcher In the Rye updated for the 21st century, except it's slightly more off the wall, and I could never imagine Holden Caulfield, despite all his teen angst, suddenly finding himself on some mind-bending reality show on Death Row where viewers vote who's going to be the next one to meet ol' Sparky. Yes, I told you it was weird.

DBC Pierre came out of nowhere to land the Booker Prize last year. And like this novel - his first - he seems a bit weird and wacky, too. There's an interesting interview with him here, which sheds some light on his background and where the seed of this book was sown.

I have to say that I was impressed with Pierre's turns of phrase, his clever way with words and his inventive use of language.

Outside a jungle of clouds had grown over the sun. They kindle the whiff of damp dog, burping lightning without a sound. Fate clouds. They mean get the fuck out of town, go visit Nana or something, until things quiet down, until the truth seeps out. Get rid of the drugs from home, then take a road trip.

I think what I enjoyed most about Vernon God Little was the satire, the whole sending-up of small town America (although I've never been to Texas, reading this book is exactly what I imagine it to be like, images and impressions cobbled together from movies and TV shows).

This is closely followed by the narrator's voice. It's unique and, for the most part, rings true. Even though the aforementioned Holden Caulfied had "issues" and was alienated, his problems, his views, were tame by comparison. One gets the impression that Vernon Gregory Little DOESN'T HAVE A CLUE about how the world operates: he's naive and gullible; he's also highly manipulative and self-centred and he's just a tad sex-obsessed; but he also has a health problem that keeps him grounded in an endearing kind of self-conscious way.

The story itself, which reads a bit like a road movie, is not so much plot driven but character driven. Effectively it all happens in Vernon's head. And the whole premise of a school shooting, which puts Vernon on America's Most Wanted List, happens before the story even starts; you just get tiny "glimpses" of what actually happened on that fateful day, filtered through Vernon's eyes, towards the end of the book.

What I didn't like was the almost fantastical elements to it (especially Part V); they were riotously funny but a little ridiculous and because of that the story didn't seem particularly believable. It also took me awhile to get into the flow of the book; I think this is a read-in-big-chunks type of story rather than one you can pick up and read for small, intermittent periods.

All in all, an interesting and somewhat intriguing novel, but unless you're an experienced "literary" type reader who doesn't mind bad language, quirky characterisation and experimental story-telling, I'd say this one isn't for you.

'Choke' by Chuck Palahniuk

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 293 pages; 2002.

To be honest, I bought this book on the strength of it's opening line: "If you're going to read this, don't bother." This wry tone lasts throughout the entire novel, which is at times laugh-out-loud funny, though the humour is about as black as it comes.

There's a lot of explicit sex in it, which isn't surprising given that the main character, Victor Mancini, is a recovering sex addict.

But there's more to the story than being naughty in broom cupboards, because Victor, who works in a bizarre 18th century theme park, is struggling to pay for his mother's full-time medical care. She has Alzheimer's and is rotting away in an institution at the ripe old age of 60 and keeps hinting at her son's mysterious parentage.

To raise money for her upkeep, Victor devises a complicated scheme in which he pretends to choke on a piece of food in a restaurant in the belief that whoever "saves him" will provide money on a regular basis because they now feel responsible for his future. He does this so regularly, notching up a string of benefactors, that he begins to run out of eateries to choke in.

All in all, this comic novel, in the same tone as Ted Heller's Slab Rat, is an interesting exposé on the problems and excesses of modern day life in America. It's peppered with off-the-wall characters and off-the-wall moments; these characters seem to have stepped off the set of the Jerry Springer show. I kept turning the pages to see what outrageous thing would happen next. A wonderful piece of escapism.

'Bel Canto' by Ann Patchett

Fiction - paperback; Fourth Estate; 318 pages; 2002.

I know you really shouldn't buy books by their covers, but I fell in love with this one and thought it looked intriguing. The plot sounded fantastic too — slightly unusual, a siege situation set in an unspecified poor Latin American country, where those kept against their will begin to fall in love with each other (or, in once case, their captor), creating their own kind of heaven on earth despite the dire circumstances. I had read one or two good reviews of the book in the Sunday newspapers and it had been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002, so I thought I couldn't go wrong. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

I liked the premise of the story and the way it avoided turning a hostage situation into an all-action drama, but it needed more than just good characterisation (of which there is plenty) to sustain me for all of its 318 pages. Opera buffs may disagree, because one of the central characters is a lyric soprano and the novel is filled with descriptions of her performances, her wonderful talent and the ways in which people gravitate towards her. But I found her totally unlikeable. Ditto for the Japanese businessman who falls in love with her. In fact, I don't think I really liked any of the characters bar the translator, Gen, who spends his time interpreting for both the kidnappers and the hostages, flitting between them all and struggling to remain neutral throughout the whole ordeal.

The ending, predictably violent, is also disappointing — and I won't even mention the epilogue which is tacky beyond description! It may be written with "great emotional delicacy", as one reviewer called it, but I can't understand why anyone would say it was a "literary novel you can't put down". Whenever I put it down, I found it a real struggle to pick up again . . .