There are some books that you chuck over the side after ten pages. I don't like to publicly bucket a book that some Agent and some Publisher's Reader and then some Publisher all thought had a decent profit in them and so went into print. I rarely mention these.
But then there's the ones that you persevere with because they ought to be good, but - well, to be honest - are a disappointment. Or more. To me. This is them. Listed here so you can try them out and contradict me.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"RITES OF PASSAGE" - William Golding (UK 1980)
I've always told myself, and others - from the moment of reading Golding's "The Inheritors" - that I'm a William Golding fan. Just loved that novel. Since then I've read his "The Spire" and "Darkness Visible", and yep, both not bad, but neither gave me the buzz that the first one did. So I went after this one. To give him the chance to lift me off the ground once more. I mean, geez, the man is a Nobel Laureate for Literature and this one nabbed the Booker Prize for 1980.
What can I say? (Without sounding like a total cretin). A third of the way in I was skipping paras and that's the death knell for me. This morning it went over the side. Like all but one of the Booker winners I've read, it's just too intent on being clever literature rather than telling a good story, and telling it well. Maybe I'm just picky. Or lazy. Or thick.
It's set on an old-ish immigrant ship to Australia (in about 1800 my best guess going by the lengthy discourses on clothing, manners, conversation, and social interactions), it's a study of class and social differences, amongst the crew and the passengers. Heavy, slow, dry, and overwritten. It probably IS a clever bit of literary work, which is what the Booker people seem to love, but it's got me convinced that I'm NOT a Golding fan at all, but a "The Inheritors" fan, which was his second novel. Next I'll take out "Lord Of The Flies" (his first novel, which I've never read, or seen the movie) just to be fair.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"WORDLINES" - comp by Hilary McPhee (Aust 2010)
This is a collection of short stories by "contemporary Australian writers", all with loads of credentials that any aspiring writer would give their non-writing arm for. But I struggled with it.
It's compiled by a woman, and nine of the stories are by women, and it's fairly plainly pitched at the female reader. Which is good, as it's imperative that you know what market you are aiming at. And this is not some misogynistic rant, it's simply that it's more a woman's book. Or maybe plenty of discerning female readers would also find it too ... too ... no, there's no way a guy is going to carry this off. All I can say is, I read as many books by women as I do by men. It's just not my sort of book. Well, most of it.
There are fourteen stories in it, but I liked only four, and the rest went over the side in quick succession. And of the four, one was very good, and three were pretty good. But the rest..... a couple were too long - if you can't get to the point of your story in 5,000 words then you need to re-think what you're trying to capture - and many were just plain boring. BUT, that's just me. If you come across it, give it a decent chance, prove me wrong.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"HEART SONGS" - E. Annie Proulx (USA 1988/94)
I've often wondered if short story collections might not be the toughest projects of all. For me, they have the highest discard rate of any fiction I borrow (or scrounge from Op Shops etc), but not sure why. This one is definitely readable, but I caught myself jumping over large lumps. A bad sign.
This is a collection of eleven of Proulx's short stories, and it strikes me that these are more in the 'slice of life' style than the usual devised, start-middle-end pieces that short story writers often put together.
Personally I like the 'slice of life' approach, done well, and these aren't bad. All very US back-woodsy in content, but done with her oh-so deft touch. She has a style that at a glance seems 'plain language', just gets on with the telling of the events and the setting and the people involved. But if you step back a bit, you start to wonder if these aren't just the scrag ends off her cutting room floor, bits she didn't know what else to do with.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS" (US 2009) by Michael Chabon.
You know that Truman Capote quote, about Jack Kerouac's 1957 "On The Road", something like - "That's not writing, its typing!" (a book I must revisit soon, to see if Truman's barb is justified). Anyway, that's the feeling I had with Michael's book. That and disappointed.
I suppose I expect a measure of - satisfaction - from a book. Yep, a large measure of satisfaction. I mean, there's - still - so many books, and - now - so little time. At this time of life I have to spend my reading hours wisely. I need a book to DO something to me, shift me from my placid little orbit one more time, add something to my store of experience. Maybe it's that syndrome of having lived long and well, so you've already experienced the best of things, and you set the bar too high.
So, did my research (this time!) from my List, and dialled in books by Helen Sedgewick, Dennis McIntosh, and Stephen Hawking. A cross section if there ever was one. So I await their arrival at my local library with my usual mood of (unrealistically?) optimistic anticipation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I got through about three-quarters of it before I gave it away. I'm sure I don't simply have some mindset against Booker winners - godknows I keep reading them - but once more this is one that gave me less than I expected from something that's supposed to be the "best of the best of each year's eligible long form fiction published in UK or Ireland". I'd like to see the other five on the short list.
And having said that, I hastily add that it's really well written, as Anne Enright (bn Ireland 1962) surely knows her way around words, has a knack for coming up with a fresh way of seeing things, and with a brilliant eye for detail that I could never achieve. So it has to be the subject matter. And the fact that it's a strongly "female" book. In fact I'd be tempted to (cynically?) say that it was cleverly pitched at a specific market, in this case the discerning 35-55 year old female reader who doesn't have enough sex in their lives.
It's ostensibly about a large-ish and moderately dysfunctional Dublin family coming back to bury one of the brothers, a guy who couldn't manage to put much of a life together (according to the back blurb) because of something that happened to him as a kid. But you're three parts through it before that turns up and it's a bit of an anti-climax and in the meantime it's a vehicle for the First Person narrator - one of the sisters - to give us detailed chapter and verse on her life and relationships and of the lives and relationships of most members of her family plus a few hangers-on. The pre-occupation with sex wore me down in the end. There's just so many cocks and penises and mickeys and the way that they are used by people in the quest for love and meaning that are interesting. I have no idea how it ends. And I don't care.
But don't let me put you off. Find a copy (there's plenty going cheap on the secondhand market) and decide for yourself.
This is the other award-winning novel that I picked up for nix, out on the kerbside with a bunch of other giveaway books. Unlike "The Gathering" above I managed to finish this one, but it was a close run thing in the last quarter of it.
Anne Michaels (1958 - ), going by the stuff online about her, is nothing short of literary royalty in Canada, but geez I struggled with the second half of this novel. Not because she isn't brilliant at putting words together - this is a masterwork of prose writing - and not that her research wasn't huge and detailed - I had to look up so much stuff to even work out the detail of the wide range of disciplines she was swimming through. And SO thick with passion, if you squeezed this book I'm sure it would drip with the juices of life!
For me, it's like it's in two halves (or even that it should've been two novels?), and I had trouble tying the two parts together. Not just that, but deep into the second half I felt that it wasn't delivering what the back-blurb promised - "... under the guidance of Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history."
She narrates the book in the First Person, but as two males, the first half as "Jakob", the young Jewish Pole saved from the Holocaust by the Greek geologist, and later growing up on a Greek island, and then in post-war Canada, in the old man's care, where he becomes a linguist academic. But in the second half it's told as "Ben" (the son of "Jakob") who, after the death of his parents, travels to the Greek island where his father lived and worked in his latter years, to sort of lay his dad's memory to rest. Or something.
But the second half - to me - comes across mostly as a platform for Michaels to tell what sounds like her own personal story, from behind her "Ben" persona, and quite a bit of it is about the passionate love of several women. All brilliantly portrayed, but I could not keep "Ben" in my head, as it was clearly a woman talking. Talking beautifully mind you, as the visual and emotional aspects of these female partners unfolded, with some passion. And delight. But it wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted to follow "Jakob" through to the end, as he confronted his own history. As promised.
So, what can I say - this book took a heap of accolades, and this writer is brilliant at writing, but I nearly tossed it aside several times. I think it was simply the quality of the prose that overcame my disappointment in the evolution of the plot. Best that you find a copy and - as always - decide for yourself.
