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.