Gateway, Frederik Pohl

Gateway is one of those great sci-fi novels that don't take you into another world, they show you another version of this one.

The protagonist is Robinette Broadhead, we meet him in a therapy session and the novel flicks between his therapy sessions in the present and his life to date. The novel artfully reveals the source of Robinette's trauma. It uses the same mechanic as Atwood's Oryx and Crake but Gateway is much more organic. We learn of Robinette's time on Gateway, a space station built by the Hechee, another much more advanced and long since disappeared life form. Humans have found the station and ships programmed for unknown destinations. Most people on Earth are poverty stricken and looking for ways to improve their lot. One of the ways they can do this is to go to Gateway and man the ships for unknown destinations, hoping firstly that they return and hoping to find other Hechee artifacts for which they will be paid well. It is a long drawn out game of russian roulette.

The novel is interspersed with posters, personal columns and bulletins from Gateway, efficiently offering insights and background to the atmosphere of the place and the lives of those in it. It was a pleasure to read, made more so by the fact Robinette isn't a perfect leading man, he is flawed and sometimes unlikeable.

Setting Free the Bears, John Irving

Setting Free the Bears was a struggle for me, and one I have given up on.

Itt is everything irritating about Irving's novels without the usual great story. It feels immature, the characters are a young man's idea of 'cool' young men, they are two dimensional and frankly irritating.

Part one was readable, part two quickly became political and silly. Not one for me. The copy I was reading had a great cover though.

Crime Never Pays, Various

I've been dipping in and out of this in the library. I love short stories because they are usually much more mysterious than novels, they are a whole different artform. That wasn't the case with these stories as the crimes were solved or explained at the end, though they did seem to be looser than the authors' full length detective fiction. An enjoyable couple of hours! 

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

I watched the film The Remains of the Day years ago with my Dad; I found it extraordinarily moving, the story and characters have stayed with me since. It feels true. The idea of two people skirting around each other because of a sense of duty or lack of courage, and coming to fully realise the mistakes they've made is heart breaking.

Having read the book, I feel the film did justice to the novel and the story, though perhaps not to the characterisation of Mr Stevens. 

We spend time with Mr Stevens whilst he is driving through the English countryside on his way to meet Miss Kenton. He has received a letter from her and circumstances have enabled him to both find a professional reason for meeting her and the opportunity to travel. We are privy to his recollections of his career and his relationship with Miss Kenton. The novel speaks of how we chose to live our lives and decisions we believe whole heartedly are the correct and moral ones, but which turn out to be misguided, or not what they seemed.

I don't recall reading anything before where I completely believe the ideas put forward by the character are those of the character, and are not those of the author using the character as a conduit. It is an incredible thing to be able to create people who exist as a whole, only barely removed from reality. Ishiguro is a phenomenal writer, it is him who seems to be the fiction. 

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

The story of Oryx and Crake is told to us by 'Snowman' we find him living in a tree and he slowly reveals the story of his life and the title characters. 

Atwood creates a brilliant alive and frighteningly believable world, and the story is gripping and intriguing. It is however unartfully told. The storytelling mechanic just serves to emphasise the fact you are reading a novel, it exposes the story rather than brings it to life. If the novel is compared of Remains of the Day; Stevens has a reason for and the time to reminisce making the storytelling much more fluid and natural. In Oryx and Crake we meet Snowman wring the story out of him and drop him seemingly arbitrarily. Having said that the ending was very good, Atwood shows huge respect for her readers in allowing us to decide what happens to Snowman and his 'Crakers'. 

I read The Handmaid's Tale at A level and did not enjoy it, a friend bought me Oryx and Crake and thoroughly enjoyed it despite the storytelling mechanic. It has lifted the Atwood-block for me and I look forward to reading some of her classics.

Voices of Akenfield, Ronald Blythe

Voices of Akenfield is one of a few Penguin English Journey books I bought in a charity shop. I bought them because they looked so well designed and because they promised to give me tastes of authors or stories that I might not otherwise read. 

Here Blythe has collected life stories from either elderly residents of Akenfield or those who are working in traditional roles like a blacksmith working in a forge that was his grandfather's. The overwhelming sense is one of hardship. The idea that people were 'worked to death' recurs, one interviewee describes seeing elders of the village bent, worn and wrinkled and realises now they were only around 50 years old. This should be required reading to counteract nostalgia for the good old, simple days. 

Five Little Pigs, Agatha Christie

I love Agatha Christie's stories and have watched countless on TV, this is the first Poirot story I've read. 

I am pleased to say Five Little Pigs didn't disappoint; it was atmospheric, gripping and had a satisfying ending. A fab guilty pleasure read.

Neither Here nor There, Bill Bryson

I enjoyed this, it's a light entertaining read, though I think I was expecting a little more. Bryson quips well and is funny, particularly when describing interactions between people or the wanderings of his mind on journeys.

Bryson could be pretty unforgiving at times and doesn't conjure up the feeling or atmosphere of a place as well as other travel writers. He also had a strong dislike for Germans, apparently based on their history. Given that Americans and the British have a very similar history of invading and wiping out races of people I don't think his dislike is at all justified.
It's the first Bryson I've read, I don't think I'll try another travel book but would try a history or memoir.

The Two Pound Tram, WIlliam Newton

The Two Pound Tram is a completely delightful book. The story follows two young brothers Second World War as they leave their rather cold family home to make their own way in the world. It is concise, simple in the best possible way, funny, heartwarming and heartbreaking. It is a novel which doesn't demand much of the reader but gives a lot back; bright and refreshing.

Something of Myself, Rudyard Kipling

Something of Myself is a collection of essays/chapters/writings by Rudyard Kipling describing his life; his childhood, working life and the places he has lived. I was expecting it to be 'of the times' and was aware of Kipling's more controversial opinions which led me to think it would be an interesting read.

The writing though is so of it's time that it became completely obtuse in places and was a drag to read. Certainly not one just to dip in and out of, only for those with a sincere (and already well researched) love of or fascination with Mr Kipling.

Fire Season, Philip Connors

For nearly ten summers Philip Connors has been returning to the Gila National Forest in New Mexico to watch for wildfires. Fire Season, Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, tells of Connor's experiences.

It is a beautifully written, atmospheric book. Connor has a real flare for description, and imbues the book with a very strong sense of place and personality. Anecdotes, history, autobiography and musings make up Fire Season, it is romantic and practical, informative and funny. It beats Kerouac's 'Alone on a Mountaintop' hands down. Highly recommended.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson

Oranges is a vivid coming of age novel, exploring the early life of an girl who was adopted by an overzealous Evangelical woman and her barely-there husband. The plan for Jeanette is a missionary life, she will be her adoptive mother's gift to the world and the Lord. Unfortunately for the mother, Jeanette finds out she is gay. For the latter half of the novel Jeanette attempts to reconcile her two selves.

Oranges.. is brilliantly written in snapshots which carefully and thoroughly build a picture of a childhood & adolescence. It is not bitter or disparaging towards the church, it lightheartedly points out the hypocrisies whilst clearly showing the warmth and community it provides. Winterson draws you in with her wit and wry observations, by the end of the novel you realise her dilemma is a distilled version of the universal push and pull between home/early family life and carving a life as an adult. Oranges.. deserves it's reputation.

Waterland, Graham Swift

I enjoyed this novel much more having finished it, than I did half way through. It's structure is complicated; chapters describing the history of the fens and the Atkinson family are intermingled with memories of a fateful time in the narrator's childhood and current events, the narrator's crisis in later years. The story is intriguing, the structure works well in tying together all the strands of the narrative and whilst the narrator's contemporary ramblings are necessary to the plot and Swift's characterisation of him, they are often tedious.

It is a novel absolutely about the fens, its landscape and the effect it has on the people living and working there. It's also about families, madness and the huge and rippling effects of what might be, in other situations, minor events. There is so much in this novel, Swift uses and questions the idea of 'history' to great effect, it is a book which needs mulling over. 

The Dig, Cynan Jones

This is a sparsely, beautifully written short novel. It's calm, pared-down delivery belies it's violent, grief stricken world.

The novel shows two men in rural Wales; one is a bereft farmer trying to cope with lambing season alone and the other is an unnamed cruel man, making a living badger baiting. The two men live in parallel for most of the book, skirting around each other's worlds.

The Dig is powerful and still enjoyable. The portrait of grief is strong and well drawn, the novel feels to have love at the edges. A profound and incredible story.

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden, Jonas Jonasson

The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden is of course by the same author who wrote The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared. The Girl.. is a stand alone story and has the same humour, sprawling storyline and scope as its predecessor. 

The girl who saves the king of Sweden is Nombeko Mayeki. She is born in Soweto and after a string of haphazard coincidences and incidents of bad luck she ends up in Sweden with a twin who doesn't exist and a series of crazy hangers-on and sidekicks... saying anything else will spoil the surprises along the way. 

It is a thoroughly enjoyable book, you get a good yarn and a crash course in international relationships at the same time. Obviously most of the politics is fictional, but there is the odd well placed dig and sarcastic remark which crosses with reality. Highly recommended (as long as you liked the Hundred Year Old Man..) and definitely a good holiday or light relief novel. 

My Name is Red, Orhan Pamuk

It's been a little while since my last post. This is partly because I am studying and so super busy, but also because I started (and got halfway through) Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red, after finishing Silas Marner.

I was looking forward to reading My Name is Red, and did love the way it was structured, with different people, animals, ideas and inanimate objects as the narrators. However it felt too much like the characters were having the same conversation over and over; and it got too heavy and uninteresting for me. I didn't hate it, rather I lost patience. Maybe I'll go back to it in a few years, but I put it aside for something lighter this time.

Silas Marner, George Eliot

I thoroughly enjoyed Silas Marner, it is a little old fashioned and twee in places, but it is a great story.

The novel follows Silas Marner, for around 50 years. He is the victim of an injustice in his early life and again later on. We see how these events affect Silas, and ultimately how he finds contentment. 

Silas is completely susceptible to the events around him, he isn't at all resilient, and the novel is one in which, for the most part, everyone gets what they deserve. It portrays village life in the 19th Century, with all it's characters and superstitions. It's a satisfying, easy read.

Going Solo, Roald Dahl

Going Solo is a memoir and picks up from where 'Boy' left off. It follows Dahl's time in Africa as an employee of Shell and then, when WWII broke out, as a fighter pilot.

The book is full of Dahl's hallmarks, the stories are all true, but still strange, absurd and dark. He writes with absolute clarity, wry humour and adds occasional reflective interludes. He paints a very bright and fascinating image of an improbable early adulthood. 

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club sits somewhere between a series of short stories and a novel. The book explores the lives of four Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the women and is a more-or-less self contained narrative.

The stories are powerful; each one showing flip sides and reasons for behaviours that we can never see in real life. They are complicated, difficult and painful love stories between each of the women and their daughters. Tan manages to create beautiful narratives which are poignant and moving without being overly sentimental or nostalgic. Whilst not culturally relatable for me; the love, frustrations and anxieties are universal. The book is a cry for us all to be better, more understanding daughters and maybe less fearful mothers.