Tag Archives: male author

Dances with Wolves – Michael Blake – 7/10

Current Affairs March 6, 2013 Leave a comment

“He had geared himself for criminals, a gang of lawbreakers, burglars who needed punishing. What he found instead was a pageant, a pageant of action so breathtaking that, like a kid at his first big parade, the lieutenant was powerless to do anything but stand there and watch it go by.”

dances with wolves

Lt. John Dunbar voyages west to take up a post at the western frontier, his life’s ambition. Finding the fort deserted and himself the only white man within a week’s travel, he sets about restoring the fort to appropriate standards and surveying the nearby lands. When he encounters the local Indian tribe, his diplomatic attempts are a little more open-minded than most soldiers of his time, and he slowly drawn into the Indian camp…

The overall arc, the idea, is a strong and beautiful one, and Blake went out on a limb to write a book which is overwhelming positive about the Native American tribe (assumed to be Sioux), particularly in comparison to the US Army. The novel is gentle; the writing is not complex or particularly literary. The reader is lulled into the huge expanse of the plains, Dunbar’s solitude at Ford Sedgewick, and equally the excitement of the buffalo hunt, the repeated attempts to steal Dunbar’s beloved horse and the conflict with the Pawnee grips the reader. I found the book easy to keep reading but also quite easy to put down and pick up again.

Faults? Lt. Dunbar is too good a man. It’s too easy for him to move into the Comanche world – Kicking Bird comments on it very directly (I can’t find the quote now). He never seemed to do anything selfish, foolish, or wrong. I felt this novel didn’t really know what it was, and that feeling lingered throughout. Was it an Army v Indians frontier adventure? A romance (there was more than enough gentle romantic language for it to qualify)? A social commentary?

The film made from this book (which originally started life as a speculative screenplay, which may explain the fairly simple style of writing) won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture (first Western film to win since 1931), Best Director and Best Sound. Sounds like I need to add that to my LoveFilm request list!

Additional information:
Copy from Bookmooch.
Publisher: Anchor Books, 184 pages (paperback)
Order Dances with Wolves from Amazon*
* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

The Piano Tuner – Daniel Mason – 5/10

Historical Fiction March 5, 2013 1 Comment

“Edgar Drake, Piano Tuner, Erards-a-Speciality, put the letter down on his desk. An 1840 grand is beautiful, he thought, and he folded the letter gently and slid it into his coat pocket. And Burma is far.”

piano tuner

This bizarre but well-dreamt tale of a timid piano tuner who is summoned into the service of His Majesty in order to travel to Burma and tune a piano for an enigmatic and eccentric British officer in the Shan States of Burma carries the reader from 19th century London (remarkably changed and yet the same as today), through the Red Sea, past India and into Burma. Once there, he is captivated by the fragile peace, the Doctor’s true motives, and the beautiful woman who travels at his side…

For the first 250 pages, this was an excellent novel. Mason sets up the trip well – the disorganised piano tuner, his patient wife a little nervous about his departure, the odd visits to the War Office – and then the epic journey on sea and land, punctuated by letters from the Doctor whose piano he will tune. Drake is an odd, timid character, who slowly flowers under the hot Burmese sun. The mix of Carroll, Khin Myo and Drake makes for 100 pages of clever and sensitive dialogue once Drake reaches Mae Lwin. The adventures of getting the piano away on a raft and the various sojourns into the nearby wilderness are funny and richly descriptive respectively.

The end of the book put me right off it – much like The Great Gatsby, the ending felt rushed and tacked on a bit disjointedly. Not dissimilar to Dances with Wolves, once the conversion has happened, the attempts to go back go badly. In addition, we are treated to long passages explaining the historical context, the necessity of which I’m not disputing, but they were fairly dry.

Maybe best to stay away from this one unless you’re a big fan of the period? If you’ve read this and disagree with my half-and-half verdict, I’d be very interested to hear it in the comments below.

Additional information:

Copy from unknown source

Publisher: Picador, 348 pages (paperback)

Order The Piano Tuner from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie – 6/10

Current Affairs February 26, 2013 1 Comment

“Years later I learnt that the translator was himself a great writer. Having been forbidden to publish his own works for political reasons, he spent the rest of his life translating French novels.”

balzacThe Book Accumulator raves about this book. I’ve seen him buy copies to have on hand to give away to people, just in case he gets the chance. Normally in German. So when this came up on Bookmooch in English, I was pretty excited.

Two city boys are sent to a mountain village for re-education during China’s Cultural Revolution. They encounter the beautiful daughter of the local tailor and manage to steal a stash of Western classics in translation; as they gorge themselves on the forbidden writing, they are released from their grim everyday lives.

I have to say, I was a bit underwhelmed by this book.

I can see why it appeals – all that French literature, the idea of secretive, reclusive, covert education, these two boys suddenly released from their academically cloistered existence into the classics of Western literature. The humour of the pranks with which they release themselves from their dire situation is spot-on – the violin ditty called “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao”, the alarm clock on which they change the time so many times that they lose track of what the actual time is and their cruel treatment of the village head man during his dental operation.

And yet, it lacked bite – there was no grand climax, no overarching fight against anything. In fact, it was probably the last few chapters that put me off. The sad conclusion of the love affair is somehow not in keeping with the rest of the book, when the Little Seamstress has been so graceful, delicate, gentle all along. There is no triumphant release from the village; instead, the boys seem to surrender to the re-education, their spirits broken.

Worth a try – my grumbles are quite specific. And I still think it’s a 6/10 read overall.

Additional information:
Copy from Bookmooch.
Publisher: Anchor Books, 184 pages (paperback)
Order Balzac And The Little Chinese Seamstressfrom Amazon*
* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

The Last Good Man – A. J. Kazinski – 5/10

Thriller February 19, 2013 1 Comment

“The correct interpretation of numbers determines whether we live or die. it’s life or death  That’s something that every scientist understands. That was why Tycho Brahe got his nose sliced off in a duel.”

“Because of numbers?”

“Because he claimed that so-called complex numbers existed. And his adversary claimed that they didn’t.”

“Who was right?”

“Tycho Brahe. But he lost his nose.”

thelastgoodman

Venetian policeman Tommaso di Barbara has discovered a trend in killings around the world – every Friday at sunset, a good person is murdered. Humanitarian, lawyer, volunteer – they all die with a strange burn-like mark on their back. Niels Bentzon picks up the Interpol report – but can’t bear the thought of travel and doesn’t speak di Barbara’s language. Only once he teams up with Hannah Lund, astrophysicist extraordinaire mourning the premature death of her son, is he able to impose a pattern and find out when the next murders will be. The question is, can he stop them?

Parts of this were really well written – as a police procedural, with all of the distractions from the climate conference and the terrorist threat, it succeeded. I kept reading, engrossed, all the way to the end with no trouble.

Niels and Hannah are both interesting characters – neither is perfect and each is dealing with their own romantic issues – but as a partnership they work very well. In particular, their weaknesses are key – Hannah’s inability to deal with normal interpersonal situations, Niels’ travel phobia; both are worked slyly into the story but are completely obvious as obstacles when we happen on to them.

Kazinski writes Venice and Copenhagen well – the floods, the abandoned madhouse/hospital, the cold, the ridiculous media interactions with the police at the conference, the conflicts between cyclists and cars in Copenhagen and most of all, the pervasive, penetrating, personal cold that a north European winter brings (I’m writing this with the heating on, socks and slippers, and a blanket over my knees).

However, this gets big negative marks for resorting to a fate-imposed, generational mysticism. I bought it until Niels tried to run away and whatever he did, events conspired to send him back to Copenhagen; similarly the suggested passing of the burden to a new soul at the climax dragged this novel down into Dan Brown land. Except worse because at least there, none of it is magical and spiritual and fate, it’s all just bad guys.

Copy kindly provided by Simon & Schuster when I went to their author-blogger meetup.
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 519 pages (paperback)
Order The Last Good Manfrom Amazon*
* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

The Lawgiver – Herman Wouk – 9/10

Modern Masters January 31, 2013 1 Comment

“God was right about Adam: for a man to live alone is not good. I can’t spare a rib.”

lawgiver

Herman Wouk (yes, that Herman Wouk) has been trying to write a novel about Moses for fifty years. As he finally sits down to start, Hollywood comes hurtling into his life; an eccentric billionaire will bankroll a film about Moses if Wouk will approve the script by unknown ex-Jew Margolit Solovei. Margo’s desperation to land the job puts her back in contact with a high school sweetheart and through him, commences a sweet and much-needed confidance with a literary professor. Throw in a naive Australian sheep farmer and a mad English agent; yet somehow romance and creativity prevail over absurdity.

This is really a character study in the somewhat polarised and distorted film world. Margo is a fantastic creation – passionate about her work yet insecure, craving the approval of her father, mentor and idols, yet perfectly happy to throw multiple spanners into works. The novel is tightly cast; no one is extraneous and all contribute to both plot and humour. Possibly my favourite character is gentle-natured Perry Pines, accidentally thrown into the whirlwind of Hollywood, yet clinging stubbornly to the farmland of his youth (“Crooked Creek Farm”).

The epistolatory/”collection of evidence” style of writing is one which I’ve only come across a few times before – it worked very well in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and spectacularly in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, while I wasn’t a huge fan of A Visit from the Goon Squad. Suffice to say, the book’s got to be quirky before you can think about using this method. Anyhow, it works here – various voices are developed without that inconvenience of having all your characters in one place, or justifying lengthy monologues/stream-of-consciousness.

Similarly, the technique of the author writing himself into the text as a character is both bizarre and gives him an auto-biographical mouthpiece; his anxiety at running out of time is palpable, as is his deep devotion to his wife of 65 years. In a sense, this has aspects of an open love letter to BSW in the same way that The End of Your Life Book Club is an open eulogy. The humour is strong without being forced – I was safe to read this while having my hair cut (no laugh out loud moments) but plenty of little chortles.

I found the deep-running Jewishness at once bizarre and intriguing, isolating, yet with the footnotes, captivating. This is really a novel about being Jewish, as well as being in the film industry (or a reclusive author, or sheep farmer…). I suspect that Jewish readers might find it overly simplistic or even a little insultingly stereotypical, but I’m not Jewish so I can’t judge.

Now I have to read Marjorie Morningstar.

Additional information:

The Confession – John Grisham – 8/10

Thriller January 30, 2013 Leave a comment

“The prosecution’s theory of guilt had been based in part on the desperate hope that one day, someone, somewhere would find Nicole’s body”\

confession

A murderer confesses to a minister. A wrongly convicted man is headed for the death chamber. Can justice prevail?

Grisham is pounding on his social justice soapbox loudly with this one: we hit capital punishment, race relations and church bureaucracy. He’s back to his Street Lawyer activism by writing (I think, anyway; it might all be a ploy to sell more copies). And yet there is a sad despondency to it all; nothing really changes. Without wanting to have spoilers, it doesn’t turn out as well as one might hope, and the epilogue suggests that nothing will ever really change.

Grisham is back to writing memorable characters and in The Confession he has two “good guys” worth talking about (my other favourite Grishams had one very strong lead - The Rainmaker, The Street Lawyer, The Testament): Robbie Flak and Keith Schroeder. Robbie is brilliantly combative and tender at once; it is clear that the family of the wrongly accused are very close to his heart, but I wouldn’t want to be a politician in his cross-hairs. Schroeder is the opposite – a softly spoken Kansas church minister with a litany of home commitments, who finds his calling in helping a self-confessed murderer and rapist cross state borders to stop misguided justice’s wheels.

As in The Testament there is no shortage to our comic cast of ridicule; Reena Yarber is one of the truest, least self-aware mountains of hypocrisy I’ve ever come across in literature. That she is prepared to exhaust her family and friends to fuel the spiral of her attention-seeking grief makes her eventual mockery on television cruelly suitable. And as for Boyette – no attempts to redeem him from his sleazy, filthy existence are made, he just trundles along being as disgusting as a cloud of noxious cigarette smoke.

The pace drags a little in the build-up: will Boyette go south or won’t he? The race riots are over-built (although still powerful) and there’s too much time spent in the governor’s office. Otherwise, the plot works well – and I was surprised that the book reached a fully fleshed-out conclusion well after the climax, an unfortunately rare occurrence in thrillers.

If you felt Grisham lost his way with Playing for Pizza and The Painted House, he’s back on the road with this one.

Additional information:

 

More recent DNFs

Current Affairs October 24, 2012 Comments: 7

I’ve realised the blog has become a bit DNF heavy over the last few weeks – which is a reflection of at least one of the following:

- I’m becoming less patient

- I’m less captivated by reading and want to do other things

- the books I’m reading are terrible

- I’m trying to clear some books off the shelves and am not giving them a fair shot because I just want to be rid of them

- I’m reading too many review books in a row and not enough books that I want to read.

In any case, a quick roundup:

Island of Wings

A Casual Vacancy

The Girl on the Stairs

The Slaughteryard – Esteban Echeverria – 5/10 (DNF)

Key short story by Echeverria, political activist in 1830s Argentina, in a new and very complete edition by The Friday Project containing a long and helpful-for-context foreword by translator which set the historical context (without which I would have been lost), text, glossary, original text with note, further poetry by Echeverria, and translation of foreword to original posthumous edition.

The story is barely 30 pages long, and there is no doubt about its gore and grisliness. The political satire/parody is very extreme – portrays bleak and bloody events and then says they show the glory of the regime. 5/10 awarded because I find it very difficult to award any sort of mark – so short and bizarre.

Additional information: copy courtesy of publisher via Twitter with no expectation of review; Friday Project, 170 pages, order from Amazon here.

Over the Rainbow – Paul Pickering – 2/10 (DNF)

Bizarre story set in Afghanistan now (i.e with war and chaos); Malone and his wife are young aid workers. Malone meets and is captivated by Fatima, Oxford-educated daughter of the former head of Pakistan intelligence services. When she films a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and it is leaked, she and Malone have to go on the run – and what’s Kim up to in Kandahar.

This felt like it was written on an acid trip. On the one hand, the portrayal of aid worker life in Afghanistan is interesting, gritty, bleak but appears well researched; on the other hand, filming a cover of Somewhere Over the Rainbow in downtown bombed-out Kabul? Everything in which Fatima was involved was incredible. The whirlwind romance between Malone and Kim and the fundamentalist religious aspect of their marriage didn’t really make a lot of sense either.

Additional information: unsolicited review copy; Simon & Schuster, 303 pages, order from Amazon here.

Shogun – James Clavell – 4/10 (DNF)

Old-timey shipping adventurers end up in Japan (which is where they were aiming) after storms and shipwreck etc. So they land very much on the wrong foot. That is all that has happened in the first 110 pages (out of 1200).

This was borderline as to whether I continued or not, but another 1100 pages of every pirate on the crew saying his bit in what was a fairly straightforward argument, and random and unnecessary violence, was too much.

If you like shipping adventures and new lands and don’t mind ridiculously convoluted conversations, go for it.

Additional information: part of a big box purchase; Coronet, 1244 pages, order from Amazon here.

The End of Your Life Book Club – Will Schwalbe – 10/10

Non-fiction October 8, 2012 Comments: 4

‘That’s ok, I have a copy,’ I told her, which was, in fact, true. There are certain books that I mean to read and keep stacked by my bedside. I even take them on trips. Some of my books should be awarded their own frequent flier miles, they’ve travelled so much. I take these volumes on flight after flight with the best of intentions and then wind up reading anything and everything else (SkyMall! Golf Digest!). I’d brought Crossing to Safety on so many trips and returned it to my bedside unread so many times that it could have earned at least one first-class ticket to Tokyo on Japan Airlines.

Ultimately sad, in that no cancer-defying miracle is forthcoming, but also uplifting in that Schwalbe had so long to come to terms with his mother’s imminent passing and to celebrate his mother’s life. Part book club record, part memoir of his own life, predominantly memoir for and homage to his extraordinary mother, a woman deeply committed to the needs of those less fortunate. It is obvious that Schwalbe had great love and great respect for his indomitable mother, and is truly grateful for the opportunity to share a beloved activity with her – and the opportunities for difficult conversations that the books provided. In a sense, the memoir will chronicle and assist Mary Anne’s legacy of libraries in Afghanistan and refugee camps in Cambodia, of refugees in Liberia and Pakistan and Thailand. This is (between books) the story of a woman who was ground-breaking and revolutionary in a quiet, mild-mannered way.

Schwalbe’s own life is perhaps less remarkable in events of his own making, but there is an untold story here – he walked away from a very successful career in publishing to “follow his bliss”. Throughout, his humility (inherited no doubt from the formidable Mary Anne) lets only a little of his personal achievements shine through – as relentlessly as Mary Anne refused to focus on her pain and suffering, so Will shines the spotlight back to his mother and their shared literary experiences.

All of that aside; the books. I slowed my own reading of this by making a note of works as they were mentioned – I wanted to look up a large number of them when I got back to an internet connection. It was only when I got to the end of the book that a clever editor had considerately put a list there! So if you read this, don’t worry about making notes as you go along. I wondered, a number of times, quite how Mary Anne, with her enormous programme of humanitarian work and commitments, had time to read so much. But then people look at me askance when I say I’m taking a book a day on a holiday, which I don’t understand, so I shouldn’t doubt another bibliophile’s capacity.

Will and Mary Anne read extensively, thematically (although that, perhaps, accidentally), thoroughly and resolvedly. There was always another book to surprise me (that they read and loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was both shocking and pleasing), another book which sounded daunting and impenetrable and an absolute must-read. Their love for literature is very clear, and their willingness to learn from the great (and not great) works of culture is admirable. Each chapter is named for a work that one of them was reading and some lesson that they learned from that work, or a difficult conversation that needed to be had. Schwalbe writes at just the right level about the books – most works get between a few sentences and a few paragraphs, but never more than that. There is a chapter of Tolkien vs. C S Lewis, but that is also mostly about the childhood of the Schwalbe brothers.

As one might expect, The End of Your Life Book Club prompted me to think about my own shared reading experiences, but that’s fodder for another post.

Additional information:
Copy kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher: Two Roads, 352 pages (hardback).
Pre-order The End of Your Life Book Club from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists – Gideon Defoe – 6/10 (DNF)

Fluff September 28, 2012 Leave a comment

“The Crustacean Carnival of Fear”

The Pirate Captain, fresh from an adventure battling Black Bellamy, takes his crew ashore in London, where he is mistaken for Karl Marx, on account of his enormous flowing beard, and arrested. Friedrich Engels comes to his rescue on the condition that the Pirate Captain takes up his business proposition…

I can’t decide whether this is a children’s book or not. On the one hand, the tone seems very much intended for children, and there are basic explanations of historical events/cultural points which appear pitched at an 8-10-year-old level; on the other hand, there are sly cultural references which would go sailing over kids’ heads and are, I suspect, included for the benefit of the weary adult reading the book with a child. I gave up on it after 78 pages not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because it was just too basic and I lost some patience.

The pirates are whimsically characterized (“the pirate in green”, “the pirate with long legs”, “the albino pirate”, “the pirate with a scarf”) and the Pirate Captain is fun; proud and charismatic, a bit of a show-off. Jennifer proves to be somewhat of a Hermionic (can I claim creation of that word?) character in that she seems to be there to push the Pirate Captain back into line so that he can stay boisterously in character but still progress the plot, but she’s likeable enough.

Defoe writes London cleverly with amusing suggestions (a monkey turns thattriangular sign outside Scotland Yard?) and there are some sparky comments on celebrity, boring speeches and various other themes generally missing from children’s books.

Additional information:
Copy borrowed from Canary Wharf library on a whim while procrastinating from joining the coffee queue (which is obviously a procrastination in itself) after reading Ellie’s rave review.
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 233 pages (paperback).
Pre-order The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists: Reissued from Amazon*
* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen – Paul Torday – 9/10

Current Affairs April 17, 2012 Comments: 6

“Faith is the cure that heals all troubles. Without faith there is no hope and no love. Faith comes before hope, and before love.”

Dr Alfred Jones, fisheries specialist, is outraged when he is forced to seriously consider the feasibility of a crack-pot scheme to introduce salmon fishing to the Yemen. Ms. Harriet Chetwoood-Talbot, consultant to Sheikh Muhammad, is most persuasive that it might just be possible – and it might. Dr Jones finds himself on the Sheikh’s payroll implementing the idea… and gets a bit more interest from political players than he would really like – and more hostility from his wife than he perhaps deserves…

This audiobook kept me thoroughly entertained for much of January, and it’s a shame I’m only writing about it now. I absolutely loved it… until the last half hour, but we’ll get back to that.

Dr Jones is spectacular. He’s highly intelligent, a little baffled by social norms, but underneath it all a general good egg and capable of great passion for his chosen subject. Harriet is lovely and strong and fragile and generally like so many City women I know, being terribly successful but hiding something a bit darker. The Sheikh was a fascinating character – seemingly omniscient and ever-patient, but sympathetic and the source of many quotes (including the one at the top of this review). As for Mary Jones – she’s a witch! But I can’t pretend I don’t see a tiny bit of myself in her: to her it’s all planned out and the silly man is just ruining it all by not following the plan!

The plot is wonderful. The political nonsense that goes on is wonderful – while the novel is ostensibly about salmon fishing and optimism and tolerance and all sorts of other lovely things with ribbons on, the satire is biting and very, very funny. The dynamic between the three leads is beautiful and fragile and develops so slowly that it is really quite suspenseful.

I was disappointed by the end – it suddenly explained why the book was written in “evidence” form (emails, interviews, minutes of Government meetings), but it felt rushed and unnecessarily tragic. Bathetic, if you will.

There were some gorgeous touches to the writing which really came out beautifully in audio:

- the righteous indignation of the local newspaper when one of their stories is picked up by a bigger paper and derided as a hoax

- the interview with Andrew Marr, political commentator extraordinaire, and the garbage that falls out of Peter Maxwell’s self-aggrandising face

I found a little article written by the author you might enjoy –  we’ll overlook the fact it’s in the Daily Mail…

I cannot believe (a) they’re making a movie of this book (b) that it stars Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt and Kristen Scott Thomas are going to be in it (c) that Ewan McGregor is actually going to keep his Scottish accent in this film for once. It’s like all my Christmases have come at once. I will be there in the first week.

Other links: Cornflower in conversation with the author, review by Gaskella

Additional info:
Copy borrowed from the library.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group, 8 hours and 20 minutes
Order Salmon Fishing in the Yemen from Amazon*
* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting costs.
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