Reading matters

'The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit' by Sloan Wilson

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 288  pages; 2005.

Sloan Wilson, who died in 2003 aged 83, wrote 15 novels, but his most famous was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, first published in 1955.

I picked this book up several years ago, attracted more by the black and white photograph of Gregory Peck on the cover and the lovely silver spine that is the trademark of a Penguin Modern Classic than the name of the author. Indeed, I had never heard of Sloan Wilson, whom, it seems, had become one of those neglected writers recently championed by the modern literary elite -- in this case, Jonathan Franzen, who writes a brief but very good introduction to this edition. (Franzen did something similar for Paula Fox's Desperate Characters a few years back, which makes me wonder whether that might explain his lack of recent fiction: he's too busy writing introductions for long-forgotten authors than concentrating on his own literary career.)

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit is described as the quintessential 1950s novel, mainly because that's the era in which it is set and written, but putting aside the sexism and the "traditional" family life -- man goes to work, woman stays at home and looks after the children -- depicted within its pages, it is still highly relevant and tackles themes and issues that are pertinent today.  For instance, at what point does one acknowledge that it is more important to enjoy one's work than it is to make as much money as possible from something you detest? When do you stop worrying about the future and start enjoying the present? Should you tell people the truth or tell them what they want to hear? Is rampant consumerism the path to happiness?

The book follows Tom Rath, a veteran of the Second World War, who is married to Betsy. They have three young children and live in suburban Connecticut, but are desperate to move up in the world, to "afford a bigger house and a better brand of gin".

'The Spare Room' by Helen Garner

Fiction - hardcover; Canongate; 180 pages; 2008.

Even before I started reading Helen Garner's The Spare Room I knew I was going to like it. It was the design of the book that convinced me, because surely a publisher wouldn't go to all this trouble to make it look so beautiful if the content was rubbish? The cover image grabbed me initially when I ordered it online, but once I had it in my possession I loved the whole package: the gorgeous cover image (tulips are my favourite flowers); the dust jacket with its luxurious matt sheen; the pretty endpapers (tulip petals interspersed with green leaves); and a green bound bookmark.

But putting the sheer physical beauty of the book aside, The Spare Room is also rather special because it is Garner's first novel in 16 years. Her last novel, Cosmo Comolino, was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award in 1992, but she then took a different writing path, concentrating on short stories and journalism. The first (and only) Garner I have read was The First Stone, a non-fiction account of a sexual harassment scandal at a residential college at the University of Melbourne, which caused much controversy upon publication in 1995. I ate that book up in the course of a day and closed the last page feeling dazed, slightly dirty and not quite sure whether the author was a genius or a traitor. Having now read The Spare Room my opinion lies toward the former rather than the latter.

That other great Australian author Peter Carey endorses Garner's talent by describing her new book as a "perfect novel".  Of course this is an oft overused trite phrase but, in this specific case, it's a wholly appropriate one. In fact, I'd go so far as to describe it as a sublime novel, and one that works its way into your subconscious so that you find yourself thinking about it when you are doing other things.

Reviewing the book is difficult though, because the synopsis sounds terribly dull and depressing. A 60-something woman offers her spare room to a cancer-stricken friend of the same age and then finds their relationship tested to the core, doesn't really grab you by the throat, does it? And yet, in Garner's careful hands this story becomes a thoroughly engrossing one. The carefully measured prose, stripped of unnecessary clutter, serves to remove the claustrophobia of such a dark storyline, imbuing it with a light-hearted touch. Indeed, there were many times when I laughed out loud, not the least of when Nicola, the cancer sufferer, asks Helen, the friend caring for her, to buy some organic coffee for an enema.

When I saw her brewing the organic coffee in the kitchen after dinner, I said tentatively, 'Do you need a hand to set it up? I can...'
She shook her head, too busy to listen.
'I wonder, though,' I said, as she forged off to the bathroom with the equipment. 'Is it a good idea to have a coffee enema at bedtime? You don't think the caffeine might keep you awake?'
'Why on earth would it do that, darling?' she said breezily. 'I won't be drinking it -- I'll only be putting it up my bum.'

Supposedly based on Garner's own experience of caring for a dying friend, The Spare Room has a genuine ring of authenticity about it. You can understand Helen's anger, her fear, her inability to look after her dying friend, even if it is for just three weeks, because you know to be in a similar situation you'd probably feel the same way. Why should a friend do what a family member should be doing? And what happens if this friend dies in your spare room?

This is a novel about death and friendship, about drawing lines and crossing them, about facing up to hard truths and shying away from things we'd rather not confront. But it also embraces other uncomfortable issues, including whether it is permissible to believe in alternative therapies if Western medicine does not have a solution, but all the while it never preaches, never comes across as heavy or patronising.

The Spare Room is one of those books that throws you in at the deep end and, to completely mix my metaphors, you either run with it or you don't. I'm pleased to say I ran with it... and only wished it was longer than its brief 180 pages.

'The Fifth Child' by Doris Lessing

  Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 160 pages; 2001.

Doris Lessing is one of those authors you know you ought to read but never do. A case in point: I've had both The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist in my possession for more than three years and never once cracked them open. The sheer size of the books and the weight of the subjects contained within, combined with Lessing's awesome literary reputation, have made me doubt my ability to understand and enjoy her work. Easier, then, to leave well alone.

That was until I read John Self's review of The Fifth Child followed in due course by another review of the same book by Isabel from Books and Other Stuff. Maybe it was time to take the plunge? A slim book -- just 160 pages -- seemed the perfect introduction to her work.

And so this is how I came to read my first Doris Lessing last week.

The Fifth Child is billed as a horror story but it's not from the Stephen King school of horror -- it's slightly more subtle but oodles more menacing because of it.

'The Road Home' by Rose Tremain

  Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 365 pages; 2008.

Rose Tremain is one of those British authors who has been on the periphery of my reading existence for about 10 years. She's been hard at work crafting novels -- 11 at last count -- and the odd short story collection, but I have only ever read Music and Silence, which won best novel in the 1999 Whitbread Awards. In fact, I adored that book so much, it may partially explain why I've shied away from reading anything else by Tremain: I've been scared that nothing else could live up to the beauty of my first experience reading her work.

I have had her 1992 novel Sacred Country in my reading queue for a year or so, but then she won this year's Orange Prize with The Road Home and I wondered whether it was time to give her another shot. A half-price promotion at Waterstone's was the final push I needed, and so, that was how I found myself last weekend opening this book and falling in love with it.

The story is essentially about an immigrant from an unspecified Eastern European country (I imagine it is Poland and wondered why Tremain had refused to just come out and say this), who arrives in London determined to make enough money to support his elderly mother and young daughter back home.

Lev is in his early 40s and still grieving over the death of his wife, 36-year-old Marina, from leukemia, so there's a sense of melancholia about him. But he is also prepared to work hard and knows to get anywhere in life he must put aside his personal troubles and just get on with it.

Naively believing that it is possible to survive in London for £20 a week, he initially struggles to get settled, sleeping rough and making a measly fiver here and there by delivering leaflets for a kebab shop. But his luck turns when he scores a job washing dishes at a restaurant run by a famous chef (the fictional GK Ashe who has a  touch of the Gordon Ramsay's about him).

With a little help from Lydia, a fellow compatriot whom he befriended on the long bus journey to London, he finds himself a room to rent in a house owned by the genial Christy Slane, a recently separated Irish plumber. Together Lev and Christy strike up a wonderful friendship, based partly on shared grief and the fact they both have young daughters of around the same age.

When Lev finds himself falling in love with Sophie, a colleague, it seems as if his new English life is finally complete, but it's really just the beginning of a complex, often bumpy, occasionally funny and constantly challenging journey...

'The Draining Lake' by Arnaldur Indriðason

Fiction - paperback; Harvill Secker; 312  pages; 2007. (Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.)

Icelandic journalist turned crime writer Arnaldur Indriðason became a firm favourite of mine when I read his brilliant novel Tainted Blood (also known as Jar City) back in 2006. The book was a refreshing change to the normal formulaic crime books I'd read in the past, and the setting -- the Icelandic capital Reykjavik -- added an "exotic" touch.

Of course there has been somewhat of an explosion in Scandinavian crime fiction since then, but it is Indriðason to whom I feel most loyal. Indeed, I have made a point of buying each new novel as it has been released, and The Draining Lake was no exception, although it did languish in my reading queue for about six months.

This is the fourth Reykjavik murder mystery -- starring the grumpy but troubled detective Erlunder -- to be translated into English. It is typical Indriðason fare but for some reason I didn't find the story as gripping as the others that preceded it.

'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid

Fiction - paperback; Penguin; 209 pages; 2008.

Visit any bookstore in London right now and it's hard to miss the displays of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist -- it seems to be everywhere. The careful positioning of it -- especially on the "3 for 2" tables -- obviously works, because against my better judgment I recently bought a copy and devoured it in one sitting. Easy enough to do, actually, because at just 209 pages and typeset in a relatively large font, this is more a novella than a novel, and hence it's a very quick read.

An international bestseller that has been translated into some 16 languages, The Reluctant Fundamentalist has also been shortlisted for a host of literary awards including the Man Booker Prize 2007, the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2007 and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2008. But it has also attracted much flak centered around its alleged anti-American stance (it's no plot spoiler to say that the main character smiles when he sees the collapse of the World Trade Towers on TV, pleased because "someone had so visibly brought America to her knees").

In my opinion, this is shallow criticism, because the book's greatest failing is not its content, but the way in which the story is narrated. This is a fictional account of a young, intelligent and ambitious Pakistani who is educated at Princeton University and secures a highly desirable job in New York. When he falls in love with a troubled rich white girl he begins to realise that her material trappings cannot alleviate her pain. Then, following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, when the entire city is in mourning, he begins to question the purpose of his own life and the Western values that leave him feeling so cold, detached and unfulfilled. He returns to Lahore, and it is here that his story begins: a first-person narrative that is addressed to an unseen acquaintance (effectively you, the reader) in a little cafe as dusk descends.

It is this narrative device that I found particularly troublesome. The tone of the voice is cool, arrogant and slightly menacing, which is fine. But every now and then the narrative flow is interrupted by rather clunky direct addresses to the unseen acquaintance -- "But observe! A flower seller approaches. I will summon him to our table. You are not in the mood? Surely you cannot object to a single strand of jasmine buds." -- which act as unwanted reminders that you are reading a book which means you can never fully lose yourself in the story.

This is a great shame, because it's a good story about an issue not much discussed in popular literature, that of the foreign man who's turned his back on the American dream. If nothing else it's a thought-provoking read and would certainly make great fodder for a book group discussion, but on the whole I found The Reluctant Fundamentalist disappointing and nowhere near as exciting or as provocative as I had been lead to believe. And the conclusion, which is as predictable as they come, left me feeling like I'd been terribly short-changed.

'Losing You' by Nicci French

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Books; 293 pages; 2007.

I'm a long-time Nicci French fan, but it's been more than two years since I picked up anything written by this husband-and-wife team. Once-upon-a-time I would anxiously await each new release, sometimes even buying them in hardcover when expenses would allow, because I enjoyed reading these psychological thrillers so much.

But I found the last French book, Catch Me When I Fall, slightly disappointing. It felt like the girl-on-the-run-from-a-stranger franchise had become tired and too formulaic, or perhaps I'd simply cottoned on to the fact that Nicci French is a one-trick pony and I wanted a little more from the reading experience. Needless to say, I didn't rush out and buy the next one: I bided my time and acquired it via BookMooch a month or so ago.

Losing You, I am happy to report, is a welcome breaking of the mould. This time it's not a young woman being stalked that forms the backbone of the narrative, but a mother searching for her missing child. It's a refreshing change.

The novel -- the 10th one in the French catalogue -- is set on Sandling Island, 60 miles from London, "but, rimmed as it was by the tidal estuary and facing out to open sea, it had the feel of a different world, gripped by weather and seasons; full of wild spaces, loneliness, the strange call of sea-birds and sighing winds". It's the ideal claustrophobic and slightly creepy setting for the story that enfolds over the course of the next 290 pages.

Nina Landry, recently separated from her husband, is about to embark on a Christmas break to Florida with her new beau and her two children, 15-year-old Charlie (Charlotte) and 11-year-old Jackson. The day ahead looms large, with a million tasks to do before the family heads to Heathrow for their 6pm flight, but things go off kilter before it even gets started. First, Nina's car breaks down, then her house is swamped by people throwing a surprise 40th birthday party for her -- and all this before 11am. 

It's only when Nina notices Charlie's absence that the suspense gets ratcheted up a notch or two. When she calls the police, they assume it's simply a case of a teenager running away because she's unhappy at home. But Nina knows this isn't true.

Embarking on her own investigation, she slowly pieces together Charlie's last movements and, in doing so, learns that the relationship she has with her daughter is not as open or as trusting as she first thought. Nina slowly begins to uncover secrets within secrets, all of which lead her to believe that Charlie will turn up dead if she doesn't find her quickly...

This is typical French fare in the sense that the suspense doesn't really let up from the word go, helped in part by absolutely no chapter breaks. The prose style hurries along at an ever-quickening pace without losing the rich detail and vivid descriptions that bring the narrative to life -- you get a real sense of the people, the places and the events that occur in ways that a less-busy, tell-don't-show style would fail to deliver.

There are plenty of twists and turns in the plot, and many characters are not what they first appear to be, and all the while the story never really escalates into all-out melodrama. Indeed, it reads as quite an authentic account of a panicked mother trying to find her missing child when the rest of the world doesn't seem to take her concerns seriously enough.

Losing You is a thoroughly entertaining read, one to quicken the pulse and test your powers of deduction all the way through. I can honestly say I did not guess the ending, nor the perpetrator, which is quite rare in much of my recent reading experience.

Now, that French seems to have worked her way into my good books once again, I wonder where I can get my hands on a copy of her latest novel Until It's Over...

'A Time to Tell' by Maria Savva

  Fiction - paperback; Pen Press Publishers; 308 pages; 2006. Review copy.

I haven't read a rollicking good family-saga-cum-romance for a very long time, so I was pleased to pick up Maria Savva's second novel, A Time to Tell, for a leisurely Saturday afternoon read this past weekend. It turned out to be perfect fare for someone currently suffering from a chest infection, and I ploughed through it in one sitting.

The novel charts the course of Cara Hughes' life over a 50-year period from the early 1950s to the beginning of the 21st century. From her first doomed love affair and a failed suicide attempt, to marriage and motherhood, the book actually opens at the end of Cara's life as a 60-something widowed invalid living with the only relation that will have her -- a granddaughter caught up in an abusive marriage.

Unusually, the story does not follow a reverse chronological order as you would expect from such a starting point, but jumps backwards and forwards in time, a style that reflects Cara's memories as and when they occur to her. Through this disjointed third-person narrative we slowly learn more about Cara's long life: her joys and sorrows, her trials and tribulations, and the very many secrets she has kept hidden from her family, including the fact that the father of her first-born was not the man she married but the one for which, some 50 years later, she still harbours strong affection.

We also get introduced to a vast array of characters -- three children, one of whom has been missing for 16 years, various grandchildren, an estranged sister, and an assortment of in-laws -- so many , in fact, that it is almost impossible to keep track of who's who. Before long, the reader begins to build a picture of a large, complicated and dysfunctional family that is falling apart at the seams.

But Cara only begins to reassess her own familial values and relationships and to regret some of her past actions when she is shunted off to live with an older sister she hasn't spoken to in more than two decades. Here, in the home in which she grew up, Cara is forced to confront some of her most painful memories...

'How the Light Gets In' by M.J. Hyland

Fiction - paperback; Canongate; 320 pages; 2004.

A couple of years ago I read MJ Hyland's Booker Prize shortlisted novel, Carry Me Down, which I greatly admired. Her ability to get inside the head of a disturbed 11-year-old boy was nothing short of extraordinary.

Her debut novel, How the Light Gets In -- written two years before Carry Me Down -- covers similar terrority, but this time the protagonist is a 16-year-old troubled girl. But that's where the similarities end.

This time the narrator is not from Ireland, but Australia, and the setting is the suburbs of Chicago.

Louise Connor is an exchange student from an underpriviledged background who has high hopes of reinventing herself as a new person, free from her emotionally distant family -- her unemployed parents, two bullying older sisters and their no-hoper boyfriends -- where evenings are spent 

all in the boxy lounge-room, all smoking; so much smoke you can hardly see, the burning ends of their cigarettes glowing, moving from lap to mouth, somebody waving at the smoke to see the TV screen.

When she moves in with her clean-living morally upstanding host-family, Margaret and Henry Harding, and their two children, 14-year-old Bridget and 15-year-old James, she believes it won't take long to "unlearn the tricks of my own family". But despite the love and affection shown to her -- Margaret is especially touchy-feely and goes out of her way to make Louise feel at home -- it doesn't take long before Louise starts to crack under the pressure.

'Sorry' by Gail Jones

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 218 pages; 2008.

Gail Jones' fourth novel, Sorry, has been shortlisted for this year's Orange Prize as well as the Miles Franklin Award. Even before it was nominated for these prestigious literary prizes, I was looking forward to reading it. I gave Sixty Lights a glowing five-star review way back in 2006, so I expected high things from Jones' new one and promptly ordered a copy from Amazon as soon as it was available in paperback.

But Sorry was disappointing. I wanted to love it. I wanted to find it so brilliantly readable I would find it impossible to put down. Instead, it was the opposite: I'd put it down and then find it almost impossible to pick up. This bugged me, because I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason for my unwillingness to finish the book. And then it occurred to me: I simply did not like any of the characters, a cast of kooky, unlovable and deeply confused people that, quite frankly, annoyed the hell out of me.

Is this a shallow reason for not liking a book? Probably.

That said, Sorry deals with some big themes, not the least of which is Australia's shameful past treatment of Aboriginals in which children were taken from their families and raised with whites, what we now know as the "stolen generations". Jones' book is, indeed, timely, given that the country's newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, recently apologised for a (now defunct) Government Policy that ruined so many lives and caused so much heartache and pain.