Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

This was a brilliantly original book. It uses images and the layout of the pages to help tell the story.

The main plot follows nine-year-old Oskar. Oskar is greiving for his dad, who died in 9/11 (which at this point is around a year ago). He finds a key in his dad's wardrobe and tries to find its lock. It is a book full of difficult lives, but it feels honest and isn't depressing, more humbling. Safran Foer entwines the stories of Oskar's grandparents with that of Oskar, and you also get glimpses of other lives though the people Oskar meets trying to find the lock.

Oskar is incredibly engaging. He is insatiably curious and invents things when he is nervous or can't sleep.
Also I designed a pretty fascinating bracelet, where you put a rubber band around your favourite book of poems for a year, and then you take it off and wear it.

The way it is written feels very real and honest, partly because sometime it feels a little disjointed and less coherent than you might expect. This adds to the feeling of the reality of the lives Safran Foer is describing. Though it also means that on finishing the book, I felt i wanted to turn over and start again from the beginning, to get all the things I may have missed. This feeling wasn't helped by the fact I devoured the last 10 pages or so. It is definitely one I want to read again.

I invented a book that listed every word in every language. it wouldn't be a very useful book, but you could hold it and know that everything you could possibly say was in your hands.

Marco Polo is telling me about India now, not sure how truthful he is being.

Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka

To be perfectly honest I found this pretty annoying. The story Metamorphosis is interesting, about a man who wakes one day to find he has turned into a giant insect. Kafka explains the family's reaction and how their attitude changes to him over time. In the Penal Settlement is also alright. However each of the other three stories are irritating and dull at best. The Burrow forces you to listen to the insecurities of a burrowing animal for pages and pages - it seems to be a theme that Kafka's characters are self absorbed and neurotic.

As it is Kafka you think there is a parallel meaning which will be important, or even just interesting. However the way in which he writes pushes you away and ensures you have none but a passing interest in what that might be. 

At the end of the book I got the feeling I got at the end of Women in Love- that I wouldn't like or agree with the author if I met them. Which, fairly or unfairly, means I am not inclined to spend my free time with them or their inventions.

I have just started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by .... I'm very excited as it has been highly recommended by someone who has never recommended me a less than brilliant book!

The Black Cloud, Fred Hoyle

I loved this, it is very original, unpredictable and gripping. It was bought for my brother (because of the last name!) and has been lent around quite a bit as it is so good.

It is a brilliant story of a team of scientists, and their governments, trying to deal with a threat to life on earth. It is not depressing or dramatic however and Hoyle manages to fit in alot of theory and scientific explanations, a social/political critique and some endearing and likeable characters. It is truly original and leaves you buzzing.

I really don't want to ruin it for anyone who decides to read it and so feel I can't say much more - other than I urge you to read it!

Next is Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories, not a fan..

Meeting The English, Kate Clanchy

This was a really good read, engaging and enjoyble. It follows Struan Robertson, 18 and just out of school as he moves from his hometown in Scotland to London to be a carer for a famous author, who has recently suffered from a stroke. Struan is responsible and old for his age, and takes very good care of Phillip whilst getting used to and finding his place within Phillip's dysfunctional and mostly selfish and uncaring family.

I read this a few weeks ago (been on holiday so no blogging!) whilst it was very hot, and the novel is based in the scorching summer of 1989 (also the summer I was born) so it was pretty apt. Its a relatively easy read but not mindless, it asks questions, is funny and just manages to shy away from cliche at the end! Certainly worth a look.  

Next was The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle - bought for my brother by his girlfriend, probably because of the same last name (quite rare and we're always local to West Yorkshire). It was brilliant and very original.

Benediction, Kent Haruf

Benediction is perfect. It is life, humanity, and lives and people and huge sorrows. I can't articulate how much I feel and love novels which aren't fast paced and don't really have a beginning, middle and end, and don't end. The book leaves, but the world it has let you into keeps going and is still there in some other place.

It is set in a small town in Colorado. Holt is surrounded by plains and the story reflects this, it is open and isolated simultaneously. Haruf's prose is pared down, long sentences but simple, with feeling and a particular sense of place even in the way he writes and the people he speaks for.

The core story is that of Dad Lewis and his family. Dad is dying, his wife and daughter are caring for him. There is a son who they don't hear from anymore. A girl just moved into the house next door to live with her grandmother as her mother has died and there are the Johnson women, a mother and daughter, and the story of the preacher and his family.

 

Benediction is a book you read and then think, yes that is how it seems to be, but overwhelmingly, it will be ok, and there will be something or someone, and maybe it is all just healing. You just can't convey some things in a sentence. But Benediction shows, for me, exactly what novels are for.

Thank you very much Picador for the proof.

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene

I'm not sure about this one, it is enjoyable, but not hugely. I think in part because none of the characters are particularly likeable, they aren't as straight forward as that. Greene seems to be moralising and testing opinions of different characters, you aren't supposed to like any of them, and they evolve and change throughout.

This from the back cover:
'Pinkie, a boy gangster in the pre-war Brighton underworld, is a catholic dedicated to evil and damnation. In a dark setting of double-crossing and razor slashes, his ambitions and hatreds are horribly fulfilled... until Ida determines to convict him of murder. But Pinkie, on the run from her pursuing fury, becomes even more dangerous...'

The above description gives a very glamorised version. The story is linear, and not as straightforward as you expect.  It continually leaves things behind and moves on. I like that nothing is explained fully, but it gives the novel a not-quite tied down feel. This, coupled with the characters and Greene's questioning of morality, contributed to my not engaging fully I think. 

I started it because I was going to Brighton for the weekend, it has a brilliant sense of place. The town is vivid, even as the characters are somewhat murky, the feel of the place and the sea-side-ness of it is conveyed.

Unusually I'm not sure what I'll read next (finished Brighton Rock in my lunch break today). My bookmark is currently in Benediction by Kent Haruf, but I'm not quite convinced it suits my mood.

Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw

I didn't realise until a couple of pages in that this is the play that 'My Fair Lady' is based on. It is pretty much the same as the film, except for a rather long afterword. This isn't too tedious though, Shaw uses it to explain why he didn't match up Eliza and Higgins. Higgins doesn't see Eliza as his equal and so can't give her what she wants; 'his relation to her is too godlike to be agreeable'. I get the impression Shaw would have been a really interesting person to have a conversation with.

Pygmalion is a very funny play, but I never really appreciated before how moral the story is. Classes and superficiality, men and women and how people are treated. Shaw lulls you in with a funny, slightly silly play and asks you lots of questions whilst showing you the answers. Its a lovely read, and worth taking the time over as its a different experience reading it over a few days than watching it in a couple of hours. 

I have just started Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (mostly because im going to Brighton at the weekend..)