Author: David Hebblethwaite

Granta Best Young British Novelists 2013: Kamila Shamsie

5th May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Kamila Shamsie has written five novels, though I’ve not read her previously myself. Her Granta piece, ‘Vipers’,  is set during the First World War, and focuses on Qayyum, a Pashtun drafted into the British Indian Army, who loses an eye at Ypres and is sent to convalesce in Brighton. For one thing, the passages describing Qayyum’s injury are agonisingly vivid. On a more thematic level, Shamsie presents Qayyum as an unworldly sort who gets caught up in webs of bureaucracy and power that he can’t perceive, both in the army and afterwards. ‘Vipers’ is extracted from Shamsie’s forthcoming novel, and it has me intrigued.

This is part of a series of posts on Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4. Click here to read the rest.

Granta 123: Best of Young British Novelists 4

5th May 2013 / / 21 Comments

I try to make a point of reading books by young writers, because I’m interested in seeing what people of my generation are writing. So I was always going to be looking out for the latest Granta Best of Young British Novelists. I’m blogging this as a story-by-story project, but the posts may (where applicable) also take in what else I’ve read of the authors’ work. Here are the contents:

That list will gradually turn into a set of links to my individual posts. So let’s go…

Clarke Award 2013: And the winner is…

4th May 2013 / / 0 Comments

Quite a belated announcement at this point, but this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award went to Dark Eden by Chris Beckett. Not the result I had predicted, but that’s the Clarke for you.

All congratulations to Chris Beckett, who’s a writer I think deserves to be much more widely read. I didn’t get around to reviewing Dark Eden properly, so instead let me point you to some of my previous reviews of Beckett’s work: I’ve written about his Edge Hill Prize-winning collection The Turing Test (and did a guest post for Gav Pugh’s blog on the title story); and I considered his novel The Holy Machine (in a double review with Naomi Wood’s The Godless Boys).

“A warm meal that was growing cold”

1st May 2013 / / 1 Comment

Herman Koch, The Dinner (2009/12)
Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett

See four people dining in a restaurant: they’re doing something inherently private – eating together, talking – yet in a public place. The boundary of personal space grows blurred when the floor manager leans in close to point out the different ingredients of each dish. The emphasis he places on provenance reminds us that this is not just a meal; it’s a performance, theatre on a plate – or so the restaurant would like its diners to think.

The tension between public and private, and the act of weighing up one’s options in the knowledge that someone is looking on, are constant themes rumbling under the events of Herman Koch’s novel The Dinner. The two couples in this case are Paul (our narrator) and Claire, Serge and Babette. Paul is somewhat reticent to confide in us: at first, Serge and Babette are simply ‘the Lohmans’ only a couple of chapters later do we learn that Serge is Paul’s brother, and later still that Serge is leader of the opposition party, and a likely future prime minister. Yet Paul is at pains to emphasise that he’s not going to name the restaurant where the four met. Clearly, there is familial tension here, and something that Paul does not want to become known.

Eventually, we come to it: Paul’s son Michel, and Serge’s son Rick, have been captured on CCTV attacking a homeless woman; the purpose of the meal is for the Lohmans to discuss what should be done. That’s the theory, anyhow. But Paul’s stalling tactics delay them, and once the discussion starts, it becomes clear that the incident is being used by the brothers for a curious and uncomfortable game of one-upmanship (Paul is secretly proud that his boy was the one in charge). The Dinner becomes a study of two men (and Paul’s attention is indeed primarily on himself and Serge) attempt to save face whilst still trying to get one over on the other, as every solution to the Lohmans’ predicament that’s mooted is first viewed in those terms.

What makes Koch’s novel even more uncomfortable to read is the sense that we’re only scratching the surface of what is going on here. Paul increasingly reveals himself to be a violent and prejudiced individual, and he doesn’t seem to mind who knows, for all that he watches his tongue in other ways. This may then naturally lead us to wonder what else we don’t know about the other characters – by novel’s end, we only have a partial picture of what has happened and what may be to come; and Claire has evidently been holding things back from Paul, so that could all be just for starters…

For me, it’s the ordinariness of the situation that really makes The Dinner work, the way that Koch insidiously disrupts this family gathering. I gather that The Dinner is the first of Koch’s books to be translated into English; I hope there will be others, as I’d be keen to read more.

This post is the latest stop on a blog tour for The Dinner. Check out the other posts in the tour by clicking on the banner below.

the dinner side banner

Clarke Award 2013: in review

28th April 2013 / / 2 Comments

I find the Clarke Award difficult to call this year, in terms of both what I think might win, and the order of personal preference in which I’d place the place the books. I think there are a number of books on the shortlist which are very close in quality, and they’re so different that they become hard to separate. But that’s no reason not to have a go, so let’s line the books up and whittle them down…

***

First out of the balloon this year is Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars – which is actually not as harsh a judgment on the book as it might seem. In the few years that I’ve been reading the whole Clarke shortlist, the titles I’ve thought weakest have ranged from OK to downright awful – but The Dog Stars is pretty decent. It has issues with plotting, and its treatment of female characters, but it’s also wonderfully written. My greatest problem with Heller’s novel as a Clarke contender, though, is that I can’t help feeling it would be stronger without its speculative content.

With reluctance, I’ve reached the conclusion that Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 just isn’t my type. I enjoyed Galileo’s Dream a few years back (admittedly some aspects more than others); but 2312’s panoramic view of a terraformed and colonised solar system didn’t engage me to nearly the same extent. I found Robinson’s prose beautiful at times (some of the best scientific writing I’ve come across in a work of fiction for a long time), but other parts of the book left me feeling indifferent. I must acknowledge that I’m not ina position to be able to form a proper view on 2312; but, on the basis that I enjoyed the remaining books on the shortlist more, it’s my second title to go.

Chris Beckett is one of my favourite contemporary science fiction writers, someone I always feel is serious about using sf to explore particular issues. Dark Eden is not quite Beckett at his best, but it’s an interesting piece of work nonetheless. It tells the tale of an abandoned colonists on a distant world, who have made rituals out of the wait for three of their number to return from Earth with help. Beckett is efficient and effective at showing how the colonists’ language, thoughts and behaviours have been altered by their isolation. I also appreciate the way he examines not only the desire for change (the novel centres on a teenage colonist who wants to break away from the others’ ritualistic existence), but also the need to keep going once a great change has been made. I like Dark Eden, but I don’t think it reaches as far as the remaining books on the shortlist, so I’m discarding it next.

If I were to rank these six novels purely by my enjoyment of the reading experience, Nod by Adrian Barnes would top the list – but is that enough to make me think it should win the Clarke? I like Nod’s nervy energy; I think it does interesting things with the form of apocalyptic fiction; and it shares with Dark Eden an interest in how mythologies may develop. But Nod also has its shortcomings: its portrayal of female characters is problematic (to say the least); it puts all its eggs in one basket, and gleefully throws the basket at the reader’s window. When I look at the two other novels left, I see fewer flaws and broader achievements, and I think those qualities make them more worthy of the Clarke than Nod.

There is no doubt in my mind that Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker is a showstopper, probably the most theatrical book on the shortlist. It has linguistic fireworks, grand imagination, and an underlying vein of seriousness to balance out its more playful aspects. Angelmaker has broad ambitions, and pretty much achieves them, even when they might seem contradictory. There’s a lot to recommend about Harkaway’s novel, and I think it would be a worthy Clarke winner – but for me it is just edged out by the last contender…

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod works on a smaller canvas than Angelmaker, and is a much quieter book. But it has a concentrated vision of a society stifled by prohibitions, ruled by a government afraid of anything it can’t label; and it uses very well the idea of seemingly innocuous details coming together in unexpected ways. It’s the completeness of vision – and the sharpness of observation and exploration of vision – that brings Intrusion to the top of the Clarke shortlist for me.

***

How about a guess at which novel will actually win? I don’t think my ordering here is going to be the same as the judges’ – I doubt that Nod will survive as long in their process, and I’m certain that 2312 will end up higher on their list than I placed it. But I do suspect that The Dog Stars will be shown the door early on, and that Dark Eden will be overshadowed by some of the other books. I’d expect the final tussle for the winner’s mantle to be between two of Angelmaker, 2312 and Intrusion  – and my instinct is to plump for Angelmaker as the likely winner. But maybe I’m barking entirely up the wrong tree; whatever, the winning title will be announced on Wednesday.

Reading round-up: late April

25th April 2013 / / 0 Comments

Rebecca Wait, The View on the Way Down (2013). On the day of Kit Stewart’s funeral, his brother Jamie left home unannounced – and the Stewarts are still feeling the repercussions of Kit’s death five years on. Over time, we learn that Kit took his own life following depression; but Wait keeps her main focus on the rest of the family, in a way which suggests that they never fully understood what Kit was going through. And the novel truly shines in showing the myriad little cracks and frictions running through the family as a result of what they haven’t told each other. This is a quietly powerful novel, and a strong debut for Rebecca Wait.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925). I first read The Great Gatsby a couple of years ago and, for whatever reason, it didn’t really click with me. I don’t know why that might have been, because this time I really enjoyed it. Fitzgerald introduces Jay Gatsby as a vastly wealthy and charismatic figure, then proceeds to reveal the shallowness and fakery underneath. The dissection of the upper echelons of Roaring Twenties society is so concise and precise; and the way Fitzgerald balances one’s sympathies for his characters is marvellous. I re-read this for my new book group, whose general consensus was that The Great Gatsby is indeed great. And I say the same.

Jim Bob, Driving Jarvis Ham (2012). This novel is narrated by the old friend, ‘manager’ and occasional chauffeur of one Jarvis Ham, a semi-lovable eccentric/loser with unfulfilled dreams of stardom. Jarvis’s friend has been reading his secret diaries, but the two of them won’t be keeping secrets much longer. Driving Jarvis Ham is an absolute joy to read: there’s such a strong voice, with the narrator’s sharp eye and dry humour. But, in between all the laughs and the lovingly scrappy illustrations lurks something rather more sinister, that gives the novel a real edge. It’s a winning combination.

G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen (2012). Jobbing teenage hacker Alif honours the wishes of his love Intisar (who’s now betrothed to another) to remove himself from her life, by creating a  program that can detect Intisar (and hide Alif from her) to an impossibly sophisticated degree. Doing this ruptures the boundary between the worlds of humans and djinn; so, when Intisar gives Alif a book written by djinn that encodes the secrets of reality, Alif finds himself straying between worlds – and being pursued. There are some nice ideas in this debut novel, and a good deal of brio in its telling. But Alif himself is a frustratingly flat character, and there’s a sense that the political issues touched on by Wilson stay in the background, and slide by Alif’s adventures rather than confronting him. Still, Alif the Unseen is promising,and it’ll be interesting to see where Wilson goes next.

“Took the end of the world to make us kings for a day”

21st April 2013 / / 3 Comments

Peter Heller, The Dog Stars (2012)

Why write about the end of the world? I suppose one of the attractions, for some writers at least, must be the capacity to strip the world back to its bare bones, and focus all on the subjects one wants to explore. These thoughts crossed my mind on reading Peter Heller’s first novel, because The Dog Stars leans so far towards certain issues that the book as a whole gets pushed out of shape.

It is the near future, after a vaguely defined pandemic  that did away with most of the people, and a side-order of climate change that (it seems) did away with much of the wildlife (Heller is sketchy on exactly what happened, but the point is that it was the end of the world). Our narrator, Hig, is one of the small number of humans who were immune to the sickness and are now eking out a living as best they can. Hig’s sole companions are Jasper, his ageing dog; a little Cessna aircraft that he nicknames the Beast; and Bruce Bangley, the only other human for miles around. There’s not much to be done beyond surviving, as other people invariably tend to be hostile, and hence need to be dealt with before they deal with HIg and Bangley. But the loneliness gets to Hig, and eventually he is driven to jump in the Beast to see what, or who, may be out there.

Hig’s narrative voice is what keeps The Dog Stars together: the spare, weary voice of someone resigned to the possibility that there may be nothing left worth saying, but who feels compelled to carry on speaking as it keeps the silence at bay. Hig feels guilty because he survived when his wife Melissa did not – and because he was the one who helped her through death’s door when she asked. In contrast with the much more hard-headed survivalist Bangley, Hig would be happiest just spending time fishing and flying; but Bangley’s disdain for such “Recreating” is hard to ignore. The gulf between the two men is underlined by a sequence where Hig attacks a drinks truck for its bounty and thinks he’s done well – until Bangley tears his pride to shreds by pointing out all his careless mistakes.

If the novel were just Hig, Bangley, and Hig’s introspection, I suspect that The Dog Stars would be a perfectly decent read. But there’s a world beyond them, and I’m with Nina Allan in thinking that Heller falters whenever he turns his focus towards that outer world. I’m willing to overlook the sketchy background, because the foreground interests me more (though it seems odd for hostility to be the norm amongst the survivors when there appears to be enough food and other natural resources to go round). But I can’t ignore the issues with plotting (the closing encounter is far too silly); or the way that Cima, the only living female character, is objectified and generally exists only to serve as an adjunct to Hig.

But perhaps my most nagging doubt over Heller’s book is the thought that it doesn’t really need its post-apocalyptic setting, and might even be better off without it. Hig remarks on the first page:

The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the whale (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn’t cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water. (p. 3)

This is the sticking point: Hig pines for his wife and his trout. He’s not so completely self-absorbed that he dismisses the wider world; but his personal losses are far more important to him than any broader ones. As a result, the novel doesn’t feel nearly as emotionally invested in its end-of-the-world elements as it is in Hig’s personal reflections. Despite its flaws, The Dog Stars is not a bad portrait of someone coming to terms with loss and finding a way to move on. But add in everything else, and the book just unbalances.

This book has been shortlisted for the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Click here to read my other posts on this year’s Award.

The Road (Home) to World Book Night

17th April 2013 / / 3 Comments

It occurred to me that I hadn’t mentioned this on the blog yet, so it’s about time I did: this year, for the first time, I applied to be a World Book Night giver – and was accepted. So, on Tuesday 23rd, I’ll be around town, giving out copies of The Road Home by Rose Tremain.

How about you – are you going to be a World Book Night giver? Have you been one in the past? Any tips or interesting stories?

The Women’s Prize and Granta’s Best Young Novelists

16th April 2013 / / 0 Comments

A couple of lists which have been announced in the last 24 hours. First, the shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction:

  • Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
  • Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
  • May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
  • Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
  • Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
  • NW by Zadie Smith

This list reminds me that I want to read Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Life After Life. I also find it interesting that, after a couple of years where the Orange Prize (as was) has been won by debuts, this year we have a list strongly weighted towards more established names.

But this is also a time for new names, because Granta have announced their fourth Best of Young British Novelists list:

Of course there are limitations to any exercise of this nature, and I don’t think there’s much mileage in treating the list as anything approaching ‘definitive’. Taken as a selection of names, though, I rather like this list. I’ve reviewed books by eight of the authors (linked above) and enjoyed them all. (I have read – but not reviewed – a ninth, whose book I didn’t care for; so be it.) I’m pleased to see women and non-white writers so strongly represented. And there are quite a few names on there whom I’ve been meaning to read. I think I might do a story-by-story review of the anthology, once I get hold of a copy. For now, congratulations to all!

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