Reading Matters

'The Emperor of Paris' by CS Richardson

Fiction - hardcover; Doubleday Canada; 279 pages; 2012.

I love Paris, I love cooking and I love reading. No surprise, then, that a novel about a Parisian-based book-collecting baker would have some appeal. But CS Richardson's The Emperor of Paris, which has been longlisted for this year's Giller Prize, was a bit like a cake that fails to rise: flat and disappointing. And forgive me for spinning out the baking analogy even further, but the ingredients in this novel just didn't work — for this reader at least — despite being packed with flavour.

Fable-like tale

Spanning a 50-year period between the turn of the 19th century and the Second World War, and covering everything from war to fine art, book-selling and story-telling, the tale largely revolves around the impossibly thin and illiterate baker Emile Notre-Dame; his rotund and religious Italian wife, Immacolata; and their son, Octavio.

In prose that it is wistful and fable-like, Richardson tells the family's history running the popular BOULA GERIE NOTRE-DAME ("the N having long since vanished") in a narrow flatiron building  (known as the "cake-slice") in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.

In the untitled prologue, we discover that the bakery has burned down and that, somewhat unusually, it contained a vast collection of books —  there are "shards of red leathers and frayed blue cloths, the curled and blackened edges of marble papers" floating in the air. We are left with that picture in our mind's eye, but must read almost an entire novel — interspersed with "callbacks" as reminders of the fire — to find out how the bakery came to be transformed into one man's personal library.

Visual quality

There's no doubt that Richardson, who is also an award-winning book designer, has a vivid imagination. He paints beautiful and evocative pictures, a bit like scenes from a film, on almost every page. This is a  good example:

Near the Métro the young woman pauses for a moment to watch as a man, perhaps her own age, appears from nowhere and greets a lady friend. He hesitates, then leans in to kiss her cheeks. She seems unsure in a pair of new shoes; she nervously fingers her hair. The man's face gleams with sweat. Tugging at the short legs of his trousers, he offers her a bouquet of drooping flowers. She smiles as she accepts them. The young woman looks away and walks on.

But, for me, this type of writing wears thin, probably because it is comprised purely of functional descriptions — all tell and not much show. It also makes it near on impossible to identify with any of the characters, who seem as interesting as cardboard cutouts (no matter how beautifully described they might be), because you just can't get inside their heads.  (On more than one occasion I was reminded of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus, which is written in a similar style — chances are, if you liked that book, you'll like Richardson's as well.)

And the narrative thread — which is essentially a series of vignettes based on love between people and love of food, literature, art and storytelling — lacked sustained momentum.

Maybe because I came to this book on the back of three brilliant five-star novels — two of which are yet to be reviewed — this one really didn't work for me. However, if you enjoy faux-naïf tales then it's likely that The Emperor of Paris will appeal.

Finally, people who appreciate books as objects in themselves will love this hardcover edition: underneath the matt embossed dustjacket lies gorgeous endpapers and handsome red-leather binding. The book pages also have deckled edges, something you rarely see in hardcover books produced in the UK.

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I read this book as part of the Shadow Giller Prize 2012. I will include links to reviews by other jury members as and when they are published. Thanks to Mrs KevinfromCanada for hand-delivering this copy to me.

'The Flowers of War' by Geling Yan

Fiction - hardcover; Harvill Secker; 256 pages; 2012. Translated from the Chinese by Nicky Harman.

Geling Yan's The Flowers of War is set during the Nanking Massacre — sometimes known as the Rape of Nanking — in which an estimated 300,000 people were killed when Japanese forces captured the Chinese city in December 1937.

An American church offers shelter

In this fictionalised account, a group of 16 terrified schoolgirls find safety in the attic of an American church. St Mary Magdalene is protected by a high wall and regarded as neutral territory in the Second Sino-Japanese War. It is run by Father Engelmann, an American who has lived in China for 30 years, with the help of Deacon Fabio Adornato, another Westerner who was born to Italian-American parents and raised in Yangzhou.

But a day after the girls have been taken in, a group of women clamber over the wall demanding equal protection. They are prostitutes from the nearby Qin Huai River brothels and they do not want to be taken by the Japanese soldiers as "comfort women". Father Engelmann tries to turn them away, claiming he does not have enough food, water or shelter, but he eventually agrees they can stay in the cellar — for two days.

To make matters worse, two wounded Chinese soldiers secretly enter the compound. They have survived a shocking massacre and have nowhere else to go. Again, Father Engelmann tries to turn them away but relents and they are housed in the cellar with the prostitutes.

Tension between those seeking refuge

The story basically shows how these four divergent group of people — the religious men, the prostitutes, the schoolgirls from privileged backgrounds and the soldiers — must live together under extraordinary circumstances, where prejudice and tension abounds, food and water is in short supply, and fear of Japanese evasion is ever present.

I had expected The Flowers of War to be dark and very moving, but apart from the odd moment of horror, the story generally falls flat. Part of the problem is the lack of a central character with which to identify, so an emotional connection cannot be made. And Engelmann, Fabio and the schoolgirl Shujuan feel too distant — and cold-hearted — to really care about.

The prose, which occasionally shimmers, largely seems all tell and not much show. It's not exactly pedestrian, but it does feel as if you're reading the bones of a story which is in need of a bit more meat.

Prejudiced attitudes

And, if I am honest, I found it difficult to believe that a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Shujuan, could be so prejudiced against the prostitutes. She is fascinated by their antics and often spies on them through a hole in the floor, but she is also so vehemently opposed to them, I couldn't help but wonder where that kind of hateful attitude had sprung from? Were privately educated schoolgirls in 1930s China taught that prostitutes were the lowest form of life? Or was it something she learned from her rich parents?

It didn't seem to add up to me — and nor did the epilogue, which felt tacked on and clumsy. Here, nine years after the massacre, Shujuan is just coming to realise how these women may have saved her life and is trying to track them down, because "if she didn't remember them, who would?"

It's a great shame that The Flowers of War was so dull, because this is an important — and dramatic — story needing to be told. Perhaps the film adaptation, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Christian Bale, is better. It wouldn't be hard.

'The Novel in the Viola' by Natasha Solomons

Fiction - paperback; Sceptre; 416 pages; 2011.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and admit that I don't understand the fuss about this novel. It seems to have garnered very good reviews and I know that Simon from Savidge Reads adored it. But I found it hard to like.

Perhaps it says more about me than the writer, but I found the story — about a well-to-do Viennese Jewess who moves to England as a refugee in 1938 — rather dull and I never quite engaged with any of the characters. And the prose style, full of overblown descriptions, wore thin very quickly.

But for those looking for a light, gentle read — perhaps to take away on holiday while you're lying by the pool or on the beach — then it will probably fit the bill perfectly. And if you enjoy romance stories, there's plenty to appeal in this one.

Because, when all is said and done, that is essentially what The Novel in the Viola is about: it's an old-fashioned romance set during the Second World War.

Elise Landau, 19, is the youngest daughter of Anna and Julian Landau, an opera singer and novelist respectively, whom are in the process of acquiring a visa to move to New York. For some unexplained reason they cannot take Elise with them, so she is forced to place a refugee advertisement in the London Times, offering her services as a parlour maid.

Not long later she regretfully bids her family, including her married sister, Margot, goodbye and heads for Tyneford, a great house on the Dorset Coast, owned by Daniel Rivers and his son Kit. But before she leaves, her father presents her with a viola, in which he has smuggled a manuscript of the last novel he has written — hence the book's title.

Once in Tyneford, Elise suffers crippling bouts of homesickness and finds it difficult to adjust to her new position at the bottom of the pecking order.

I won't spoil the plot, but, rather predictably, Elise falls in love with Kit, and the romance that follows scandalises the local community. But when war is declared against Germany and Kit signs up to the Navy, there's a very real threat he may never return...

The story is told in first person from the perspective of Elise looking back on her life, and every now and then she drops in little clues which suggest that things never panned out the way she might have expected. This lends some intrigue to the storyline, but sadly Solomons has a tendency to play games with her readers — on at least two occasions Elise describes situations which never happened, they are merely fantasies inside her head. This has the effect of weakening the narrative as a whole, because you suddenly begin to doubt anything that Elise tells you.

While The Novel in the Viola is certainly pleasant enough reading — Solomon's strength is in her depiction of the inner workings of a big house and the class divide between the servants and the owners — the plot is not terribly gripping, and it's at least 100 pages too long.

However, given all the glowing five-star reviews on Amazon, perhaps I'm just completely out of sync with the rest of the book-buying public. I rather suspect I might be put straight in the comments below.

'Hotel Bosphorus' by Esmahan Aykol

Fiction - paperback; Bitter Lemon Press; 246 pages; 2011. Translated by Ruth Whitehouse.

I like crime novels and translated fiction so I thought this book, a murder mystery written by a Turkish writer, would be just my thing.

Hotel Bosphorus is set, as the title would suggest, in Istanbul. Billed as "the first Kati Hirschel murder mystery" it introduces us to the ballsy heroine who is the star of the series. (There are three written so far, but this is the first to be translated into English.)

Kati is 43 years old and single. Her heritage is German, but she has lived in Turkey "first for seven years, then for 13", which is short hand for a much longer story: she was born in Istanbul, spent the first seven years of her life there, then moved away with her parents, only to return as a 30-year-old, where she has remained ever since.

What most readers will probably find most appealing about Kati is her profession: she is the proud owner of Istanbul's only crime book shop. But whether you find it believable that her love of crime fiction means she has the ability to tackle a real life crime investigation is another thing. For me, I found this a leap of faith too far. Indeed, I found it fairly preposterous, but was prepared to give Aykol some leeway. It's fiction after all.

The crime occurs in a hotel where Kati's long-lost friend, Petra, is staying. Petra is a German movie star in town to begin work on a new film. The victim is the little-known German director of the film. There is deep suspicion that Petra murdered him because they were rumoured to have been romantically linked, but Petra denies any involvement -- both in the murder and the romance.

While Kati's not exactly sure whether Petra is telling the truth, she's determined to get to the bottom of what happened. Along the way she strikes up a friendship with the local police inspector, who turns out to be the least professional policeman I've ever come across in fiction -- he not only shares details of the investigation with Kati, he tries to have sex with her on two separate occasions! She also meets journalists and various members of the movie's production crew, and she even has a run-in with a gangland boss. But it is a chance encounter with a suave Turkish lawyer that helps her solve the case. Yes, all rather ridiculous, I have to say.

However, I did enjoy the humour in this novel. Kati is an expert at delivering some terrific one-liners:

Also, from experience, I've learned that you can't take revenge on someone who doesn't care about you, whereas it's easy to take revenge on someone who loves you -- all you have to do is commit suicide.

And her wry observations about the differences between Germans and Turks are also very good. While those cultural differences might not exactly dispel racial stereotypes, Kati is allowed to make them because:

In my experience only those who have lived abroad have what it takes to criticize their own people, especially in the case of Germans.

Of course, she also tends to criticize Turkish people -- for instance, the taxi drivers who don't know where they are going -- but leaps to their defence whenever she hears others put them down.

The only place in the world where I feel at home is Istanbul. Maybe that's because Istanbul  is the only place that has no objection to me being myself... After a while, people don't distinguish between which experiences they have selected for themselves and which have been dished out to them. I have a bona fide Turkish passport, yet in Turkey I'm a German. A German who speaks good Turkish. And when I'm in Germany, despite having a German passport and the fact that my mother's a Roman Catholic, I'm a Jew.

But there were many things about this book which annoyed me, in particular Aykol's emphasis on telling instead of showing. For instance:

To pass the time, I looked at the shop-window displays in the lobby. What strange things they were selling. 

What were these "things"? Apples and handbags? Goatskin shoes and tacky snow globes? The author never bothers to tell us. Perhaps I'm being harsh, but Hotel Bosphorus is filled with sentences like this, and while I understand it's a crime novel and not literary fiction this lack of attention to detail at the expense of moving the narrative forward feels shoddy. Indeed, most of the prose feels flat and limp.

The book certainly has its strengths, but on the whole I felt the story was clumsily written and the crime aspect was far too simplified for my tastes. It reminded me very much of Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which, frankly, I hated. It's fair to say I probably won't be bothering with the rest of the Kati Herschel series when they eventually get translated, but that's not to say you won't enjoy them if you like whimsical murder mysteries set in foreign cities.

'On a Chinese Screen' by W. Somerset Maugham

Non-fiction - Kindle edition; Vintage Classics; 137 pages; 2010.

This is one of those books I probably would never have bothered reading had it not been for two important facts: it was a free download from manybooks.net and it was about China.

What I hadn't clocked when I first began reading it was this: there is no narrative thread holding this book together. It is merely a collection of pen-portraits of various people, mainly expat officials, that Somerset Maugham met on his travels through China in the early 1920s.

There are 58 short sketches in total, and while each one is expertly and vividly drawn, it does not make for an effortless read because it is simply too disjointed. It's almost like reading someone's notebook rather than a published book.

Its importance, I guess, is more as an historical "document", because Maugham's "reportage" offers a glimpse of Europeans living in China during the interwar years. What he depicts is far from pleasant. These are people who don't give a damn about the culture or the people. They simply cling onto the vestiges of home. No one bothers to learn the language or befriend the natives. Assuming that Maugham's descriptions of British diplomats, Catholic missionaries and the like are accurate, this is a rather damning portrayal of the English abroad.

This is a good example:

China bored them all, they did not want to speak of that; they only knew just so much about it as was necessary to their business, and they looked with distrust upon any man who studied the Chinese language. Why should he unless he were a missionary or a Chinese Secretary at the Legation? You could hire an interpreter for twenty-five dollars a month and it was well known that all those fellows who went in for Chinese grew queer in the head.

Funnily enough, I get the impression that many of his sketches are tongue-in-cheek and that Maugham knows full well that these people are truly hideous in outlook and attitude.

Indeed, the book works best when Maugham offers up his own opinion of the Chinese natives (mainly "coolies") and the places he visits (mainly villages along the Yangtze) -- he seems far more accepting, interested and intrigued by his travel adventures than his British counterparts.

There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent, and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down in the depth of the valley. Menacingly, the grim watch towers, stark and foursquare, at due intervals stood at their posts.

The book, however, is probably best read by genuine W. Somerset Maugham fans, those with a deep interest in China or budding authors wishing to learn the art of descriptive writing.

It was first published in 1922.

'If On A Winter's Night A Traveler' by Italo Calvino

Fiction - hardcover; Everyman's Library; 304 pages; 1993. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver.

If On A Winter's Night A Traveler was Italian author Italo Calvino's much lauded 16th novel. A rather clever, knowing book, it pokes fun at reading, writing and publishing. From its opening passage, I suspected it was going to be a rather enjoyable read:

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice--they won't hear you otherwise--"I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.

But sadly, I found this book so clever as to be pretentious, and so contrived as to be patronising. Most of all I just found reading it an incredibly frustrating experience.

The nub of the novel, which was first published in 1979, is this: a reader tries to read Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler but discovers that the book is faulty. He takes it back to the shop for a replacement, only to discover the replacement book is also faulty. And therein lies the pattern: in alternate chapters we follow the reader's adventures as he tries to  track down a perfect copy of the book. This is interspersed with the actual text of the books he acquires, none of which turn out to be Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.

Confused yet? I found it excruciatingly perplexing in places, particularly as the reader's side of the story is told in the second person, so the "you" feels like it is being addressed to you personally, even though it becomes increasingly clear that that is not the case. It gets worse when characters associated with the reader, including the enigmatic Ludmilla who also bought a defective copy of the book, cross-over so that they also appear in the text the reader is reading, blurring the lines between the reader's life and the fiction he reads.

Essentially, this is the type of novel that just gets your brain in a complete muddle. And while I'm not averse to this kind of post-modernist technique, where the author also appears as a character (think Paul Auster or J.M. Coetzee), and where different literary styles and genres are "sampled" in the one novel (think David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas), I found If On A Winter's Night A Traveler rather exasperating.

It doesn't help that the alternate chapters of the book, which are presented as opening chapters of what is supposed to be Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler (but never are), is that they all end abruptly at a climatic moment, so you are left dangling and never find out what happens next. This happens 10 times. (At one point Calvino compares sex to reading, so perhaps these abrupt endings are his idea of a joke about failing to climax.)

Each of these 10 chapters are written in a different style or genre, so Calvino gets to show off his ability to write a satire, a romance, a thriller and so on. But unfortunately each chapter does not feel sufficiently different to the one that precedes it, so the "trick" failed to truly work.

The saving grace, for me anyway, is the illuminating insights and ideas Calvino presents about the intertwined and ever-changing relationships that authors and readers have with books. He makes it clear that every author is looking for the perfect reader, and every reader is looking for the perfect book. He makes other statements about different readers wanting different things from books, and that every time we read a book we bring with it our own prejudices based on our life experience. In fact, he goes so far as to suggest that our enjoyment of reading a book can be influenced by something as inconsequential as to where we are sitting (or lying) when we read it and what is going on in our personal lives at the time.

While I admire Calvino's ambition, his ideas, his ability to turn our notion of a novel on its head, this book clearly wasn't for me. The elegant prose and the courageous experimentation (with its nod to James Joyce), couldn't make up for its lack of narrative drive, detailed descriptions and rich characterisation. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler is one of those books that takes you right out of your comfort zone; it's intelligent, a little bit witty, a little bit cynical but ultimately it's too emotionally shallow to offer any real insight into the human condition.

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This book was chosen by Anirban as part of our Riverside Readers book group.

'The Twelve' by Stuart Neville

 

Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 466 pages; 2010.

Stuart Neville's debut crime novel is set in Belfast at a fragile time in the peace process. Gerry Fegan, a former IRA hitman who murdered 12 people during The Troubles, is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. These comprise five soldiers (three Brits and two from the Ulster Defence Regiment), a cop, two Loyalists from the Ulster Freedom Fighters, and four civilians "who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time".

Fegan is particularly haunted by the deaths of a young mother and her baby whom he "accidentally" killed when the bomb he planted in a butcher's shop went off earlier than expected. He continues to hear the cries of the baby, which he tries to drown out by drinking himself into a stupor every night. The other ghosts follow him around and talk to him. Sometimes he talks back.

So far, so good. This looks like a book about remorse and guilt and atoning for your sins. But no. Neville takes it one step further and turns it into a form of vengeance, because the only way Fegan can come to term with his past deeds is not to accept personal responsibility for them, but to find the people he blames for making him carry out these horrendous acts. And then kill them. One by one.

His hitlist includes a past member of the IRA who has reinvented himself as a leading politician in Stormont; a former soldier of the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment; a handful of Belfast street thugs; and a priest.

If The Twelve is to have any redeeming features it is that it quite clearly shows how murder and corruption is rife on both sides of the political and religious divide. Neville also exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the peace process, which does not seem to be motivated by peace and goodwill, but by who can get the larger slice of the political and financial pie. 

While Fegan is running around the streets trying to pick off the people he feels destroyed his life and, in turn, the lives of 12 others, he bemoans the fact that the younger generation are more concerned about having the right car and living in a nice house than anything that went on before. The Troubles, he realises, mean nothing to the young adults of today.

Everywhere is the feeling that times have changed. One of the politicians, McGinty, sums it up like this:

"This is a different world. The bombs won't work any more. The dissidents put an end to that in Omagh. The people won't tolerate violence like they used to. Then 9/11 came along. The Americans don't look at armed struggle the same way. Used to be we could sell them the romance of it, call ourselves freedom fighters, and they loved it. The money just rolled in, all those Irish-Americans digging in their pocket for the old country. They don't buy it any more. We've got peace now, whether we like it or not."

But Campbell, a soldier who once patrolled the streets of Belfast and now resides in the Republic, thinks the changes are fairly superficial.

The city's invisible borders remained the same as when Campbell first walked its streets holding a rifle eighteen years ago. The same lowlifes still fed off the misery they created, deepening the divisions wherever they could. The same hatreds still bubbled under the surface. But the city had grown fat, learning to mask its scars when necessary and show them when advantageous.

Despite these perceptive insights into life after The Troubles, I felt slightly ambivalent about this book. Once you strip the setting away, this is a fairly laborious read about an old hitman now conducting a new series of assassinations. The story is completely devoid of heroes, as well it might be, but for a thriller to work you clearly need to be cheering on the protagonist. I felt nothing but ambivalence towards Fegan.

I also struggled to get beyond the cliches: the woman who needs saving and the tough nut who begins to open up to her. I won't mention the guns, the car chases, the beatings and the deserted rural properties where everything comes to a head!

For other (more positive) takes on this novel, see the reviews on Petrona and Lovely Treez Reads.

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This is the fourth book read as part of my Northern Ireland season, which runs every Saturday in July. The full schedule is available here.

The next (and final) book to be reviewed is David Park's The Truth Commissioner on Saturday, July 31.

'Beautiful Malice' by Rebecca James

 

Fiction - paperback; Faber and Faber; 368 pages; 2010. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

In a bid to support Australian authors, I requested Rebecca James' Beautiful Malice from the publisher when I began to hear good things about.

It's essentially a very simple story about Katherine, a teenager coming to terms with a family tragedy. She changes her name, moves to another city and makes friends with Alice, a beautiful and charming girl in her class, who turns out to be a bit of a nutcase.

And that's kind of it.

Well, there's a little love affair or two thrown in for good measure, and some flash backs that reveal the tragedy behind Katherine's heartache, and a curve-ball in the form of a narrative thread that leaps ahead by five years. It can feel a bit disorientating in places, although I suspect that's deliberate, but for the most part this is a fairly predictable tale told in fairly pedestrian prose.

The characters are one-dimensional and even Alice, by far the most interesting person in the whole book, comes across as a caricature of a self-obsessed narcissist.

For much of this book I kept wondering which kind of audience it was aimed at. Faber and Faber bills it as "general fiction" but it feels like "young adult" to me. I suspect teenage girls would love it because it appears to address some universal themes, for instance, balancing friendships with peer pressure, and learning from your mistakes. There are plenty of moral messages here too, such as the dangers of drugs, alcohol and unprotected sex, that seem too dumbed down for anything other than a teenage audience.

I had really wanted to love this book, and while I read it relatively quickly (it's a very easy read that slips down like a tall glass of orange squash in one thirst-quenching hit), it didn't tick the boxes I expect from a good read. In a word, disappointing.

'Fledgling' by Octavia E. Butler

 

  Fiction - paperback; Grand Central Publishing; 310 pages; 2005.

While I've studiously avoided the current Twilight craze, I'll admit that I'm not averse to reading novels about vampires. I loved Anne Rice's early work (which I read in my 20s), very much enjoyed Bram Stoker's Dracula and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian and thought John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In was a surprisingly intelligent horror story.

But Fledgling, which presents a new twist on the vampire legend, lacks the spine-tingling horror I've come to expect from the genre. Instead, this is a book, deeply rooted in science fiction, which examines issues of race and identity, sex and sexuality, biology and genetic engineering. There's even some law and politics thrown in for good measure.

In this novel Butler portrays vampires as a much-maligned race called Ina. The central character, Shori, looks like a little black girl but she is really a 53-year-old vampire who has been genetically modified so that she has extra melanin in her skin to allow her to walk in sunlight. This is supposed to be a step forward for the Ina, but there are some who think that Shori poses a threat to the purity of the Ina race, and will stop at nothing to destroy her.

When the book begins we find that Shori is recovering from one of those plots to kill her: she awakens in a dark cave, burnt from head to toe, and with no memory of what has happened to her. Indeed she has no knowledge or awareness that she is a vampire. It is only when she is picked up by a young man, as she walks along a deserted road, that her desire to feed off him reminds her that she is an Ina, not a human being.

Much of the book revolves around Shori and her symbionts (the humans she feeds off in a kind of mutually dependent relationship) going on the run from those who want her dead. There's a lot of gun-slinging before the story morphs into a kind of courtroom drama in which those responsible are held to account for their crimes.

I have to be honest and say that this book didn't exactly grab me by the throat (pun fully intended). The prose felt a bit pedestrian and the dialogue awfully contrived. There were elements that just made me go ewwww and there were times I wasn't sure I really wanted to continue. But... there was something about the narrative that sucked me in (another pun, I'm sorry) and I did want to keep reading if only to find out who was after Shori and how she would go about saving herself and those like her.

Octavia E. Butler was a highly regarded prize-winning author of science fiction. Fledgling, published in 2005, was her last book before she died, aged 58, in 2006.

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Fledgling was the eighth and final novel up for discussion in the Not The TV Book Group. The book was actually nominated by myself for no other reason than I thought it might be interesting to read a different take on the vampire novel given popular culture's current obsession with all things vampire. The discussion remains open, so do feel free to peruse the comments and add your thoughts if you've read the book.

'Alone in Berlin' by Hans Fallada

Fiction - paperback; Penguin Modern Classics; 608 pages; 2010. Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann.

Hans Fallada, the pen name of Rudolph Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen (1893-1947), reportedly wrote Alone in Berlin in just 24 days. And it shows.

This is a big, rambling book, with a loose narrative structure, and a cast of what seems like a million characters. It's set in Berlin during the Second World War and focuses on one man's efforts to resist the Nazis in the best way he knows how: by dropping postcards with anti-Hitler messages scrawled upon them in public buildings across the city. If he is caught, there is no doubt that Otto Quangel, an ordinary German, will be executed by the regime.

This sounds like a terrific premise for a book -- and it is. I can honestly say that the first 200 or so pages are genuinely gripping, as Fallada introduces us to the characters, provides accounts of their troubled and occasionally trivial lives under the Third Reich, and shows how Otto, once a supporter of the Nazi regime, changes his mind when his only son is killed in the war. When together with his wife, Anna, he begins dropping anti-fascist postcards as an act of quiet rebellion you can't help but admire him for it.

But the momentum of this novel, which is divided into four chunks, is lost in the big baggy structure of it. There are countless characters, many of whom simply drop out of the storyline without explanation. Often the Quango's tale of resistance becomes subsidiary to other tangential threads, some of which are interesting stories in themselves -- for instance, Hetty Haberles decision to shelter the weasel Enno Kluge from the Gestapo on the basis that they prosecuted her husband -- but end up turning what should be the main narrative into mere background noise.

However, the book does throw up some important issues about politics, morality, truth, justice and humanity, which seem particularly prescient given the book was written in 1947 without the benefit of looking at the Nazi regime through decades of moral reflection and historical analysis. If there is any message to be taken from the story it is this, best summed up by one of the characters, Dr Reichhardt, who reassures Otto that his efforts of resistance were not useless:

"Well, it will have helped us to feel that we behaved decently till the end. [...] Of course, Quangel, it would have been a hundred times better if we'd had someone who could have told us, such and such is what you have to do; our plan is this and this. But if there had been such a man in Germany, then Hitler would never have come to power in 1933. As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we ARE alone, or that our deaths will be in vain. Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end."

As much as I wanted to love this book, particularly it's moral message (I read it very soon after A Woman in Berlin), I couldn't overlook its woolly structure and its meandering narrative. Apparently the story is based on a real life case in which a poorly educated working-class couple conducted a three-year propaganda campaign during the Nazi regime. This is documented at the rear of the novel and, in many ways, was more interesting to read than Fallada's fictionalised account.

Sadly, Fallada, who spent much of his adult life in an out of psychiatric care, did not live to see the publication of this book. It was translated into English for the first time in 2009, where it was published in the USA as Every Man Dies Alone.