Author: David Hebblethwaite

Ten favourite books read during the lifetime of this blog

21st August 2012 / / 9 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I’m joining in this week because I was really taken with the theme. I’ve been reviewing books online since 2004, but this blog started in 2009, and I’m concentrating on the period since then. What follows here is not a definitive list of favourites, nor is it in a strict order – it’s a list of highlights. It’s a snapshot of what I like to read.

1. The Rehearsal – Eleanor Catton

This is a tale of pure serendipity. I was visiting Cambridge, and saw the hardback of The Rehearsal in a bookshop. It wasn’t the subject matter that grabbed me, but the blurbs promising something different. I took a chance on it… and really didn’t get along with its mannered prose style at first. But I persevered and, once I realised what Catton was doing – how completely the novel’s different aspects embodied its theme of performance – I got into it, and ended up absolutely loving the book. The Rehearsal is the fondest memory I have of reading a book in the last few years, and it showed me a new way to appreciate fiction.

2. Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas

A few bloggers enthused about Pocket Notebook in 2010 – and I really liked its Clockwork Orange-inspired cover – but I never got around to reading it. The following year, I started reviewing for Fiction Uncovered; when I saw Pocket Notebook on their review-copy list, I decided to try it. I was utterly blown away by the vividness with which Thomas created his corrupt-copper protagonist. My only regret is that I didn’t read this novel a year earlier.

3. Skippy Dies – Paul Murray

This book has 661 pages. I devoured the whole lot in a weekend. An Irish boarding-school comedy with added quantum physics, Skippy Dies goes from humour to sharp characterisation to social commentary to pathos to the borders of science fiction and back again, without putting a foot wrong. Stunning stuff.

4. Solo – Rana Dasgupta

When I started this blog, I was just beginning to investigate the parts of the contemporary British literary scene that would most interest me. The website Untitled Books was (still is) a great resource, and it’s where I found out about Solo. I love books with wide-ranging sensibilities, and Solo – with its account of a life that feels like a daydream, and a daydream that feels like life – is that sort of book.

5. Beside the Sea – Véronique Olmi

One of the great joys of book blogging has been discovering small presses. Peirene Press are one of the fine publishers who’ve emerged in the last couple of years, and Beside the Sea is one of their best books. Ostensibly the story of a mother taking her children on a trip to the seaside, darkness gradually emerges from behind the happy façade to build up a brilliant but tragic portrait.

6. Yellow Blue Tibia & New Model Army – Adam Roberts

Yellow Blue Tibia was the very first book I reviewed on this blog. I was wanting to catch up on some of the contemporary sf authors I hadn’t read, and my first Adam Roberts novel just blew me away. My second, New Model Army, did the same the year after – a novel that I can genuinely say did something I hadn’t come across in a book before. I can’t choose one of these books over the other for this list, so here they both are.

7. The Affirmation – Christopher Priest

Being surprised by an unfamiliar author is great; but so is reading an excellent book by a writer you already know. A Christopher Priest novel is a maze of realities and unreliable perceptions, and The Affirmation is up there with his best. Priest’s narrative shifts between realities, and his masterstroke is to make our world seem no more (or less) real than his fictional one.

8. An A-Z of Possible Worlds – A.C. Tillyer

You can’t explore the world of book blogs for too long without coming across books that you’re unlikely to hear of elsewhere. I first heard of An A-Z of Possible Worlds through Scott Pack’s blog, and it really ought to be better known. Lovingly produced by its publisher, Roast Books, this is a collection of stories in a box – twenty-six individual pamphlets, each about its own place. The stories are very fine, too.

9. Coconut Unlimited – Nikesh Shukla

Here’s another way of discovering books in the blog age: finding a writer to be an engaging presence on Twitter; then, a year (or however long) later, reading his or her newly-published book. That’s what happened with Coconut Unlimited, which turned out to be a razor-sharp and hilarious comedy. More interconnectedness: I met Nikesh Shukla last year at a Firestation Book Swap, which Scott Pack usually hosts (although he wasn’t there for that one).

10. The City & the City – China Miéville

The City & the City generated one of my longest reviews, and I can’t remember reading another book that had so many interpretations from so many different people. It’s a novel to argue with, and argue about. At the time, I hadn’t read one of Miéville’s adult books since The Scar; I remember thinking that The City & the City was good enough in itself, but too quiet to catch on as some of his earlier works had. Of course, I was wrong. It was fascinating to see how the novel was received beyond the sf field, and the book blogging community was a big part of that reaction for me.

Ewan Morrison, Tales from the Mall (2012)

20th August 2012 / / 6 Comments

Sometimes I’m not sure what to make of the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. Look at its processes, and you might conclude it’s not worth paying attention to – often it seems to come down more than anything to which books have the most vociferous supporters. And the make-up of this year’s shortlist suggests there are structural issues with the Prize’s processes, which I believe are now being looked at.

But – fair’s fair – for all its flaws, the Not the Booker has a track record of highlighting interesting books. I’ve read all bar one of the previous winners, and all were very much worth my time. So I’m not about to dismiss a title associated with the Not the Booker Prize lightly, not even when – like Ewan Morrison’s Tales from the Mall – it attracted a deluge of nominations at a stage where the guidelines clearly stated only one per book was necessary. That alone almost put me off Tales from the Mall; but a book deserves to be judged on its own merits, and this one sounded genuinely interesting – so I decided to read it. I’m glad I did.

In his introduction, Morrison describes Tales from the Mall as an attempt to ‘document the folk culture of the mall’ (p. 8). The book is built from short stories, retold anecdotes, and factual sections; loosely structured as a journey around a mall. This is a structure which neatly mirrors the subject: a shopping mall is a place where people gather together but have very separate, individual experiences; Morrison presents a set of individual pieces which collectively tell a broader ‘story’ about the mall.

The different types of text in Tales from the Mall serve different functions. Broadly speaking, the factual material shows the intentions behind the mall: it’s a controlled and controlling space (one designed to encourage people to stay and shop; given names meant to evoke certain reassuring qualities), but also one where that can be subverted (one of the chapters is a list of pranks taken from a social networking site). The fiction and anecdotes, however, are more about the actuality, suggesting the different roles that malls might play in people’s lives.

It’s striking how few of Morrison’s characters are at the mall primarily to shop. In this book, the mall may be a neutral space where a separated father goes to meet his children. It may be a place to arrange a meeting with a blind date – somewhere to create a new persona. It may be the place to escape from life’s woes. Morrison paints a nuanced picture of an institution (institutions, really) being put to many more uses than the one for which it was designed.

The characterisation within individual stories can sometimes veer towards the stereotypical (the separated mother in ‘Food Court’, with her extensive assortment of modern-day worries about her children’s health, springs to mind). But I think it’s fair to observe that everything in Tales from the Mall – characterisation included – has been shaped to serve the book’s wider project. The real protagonist of this book is ‘the mall’ itself, less as a specific place than as a concept. It’s an idea that remains in flux, as malls themselves face competition from online shopping, and are re-emerging with apartments attached as a means of trying retain their usefulness.

There’s been some questioning over whether Tales from the Mall should have been eligible for the Not the Booker Prize – is it actually a novel, or a collection of short stories? For the purposes of this review, that doesn’t really matter, though I have (deliberately) been calling it a ‘book’ rather than anything more specific. I do find myself thinking about Morrison’s book as a complete unit, though. It feels like a composite portrait of its subject, and a different way of approaching fiction. If the Not the Booker brings to light more works with the distinctiveness of Tales of the Mall, then it’s worth following.

Elsewhere
Ewan Morrison’s website
Cargo Publishing
Interview with Morrison at Scots Whay Hae!
Some other reviews of Tales from the Mall: Savidge Reads; Subtle Melodrama Book Reviews; Paul Reviews Books; Stuart Kelly for the Guardian.

Sunday Story Society: “Atlantic City”

19th August 2012 / / 18 Comments

To keep up to date with the Sunday Story Society: view our schedule; follow @SundayStorySoc on Twitter; or visit us on Facebook.

Welcome to the Sunday Story Society discussion of Kevin Barry’s “Atlantic City“. If you’ve not seen one of these before, I always start with a round-up of some online commentary, before opening the comments up to you.

As far as I’ve seen, responses to “Atlantic City” have been overwhelmingly positive – like this one, from Daragh Reddin in Metro:

In…’Atlantic City’ – the languid atmosphere of a sultry summer night in a non-descript midlands town is perfectly evoked. Barry’s dialogue here is suitably sure-footed and he demonstrates a deft hand in capturing the unrealised aspirations of his characters.

Peter McClean praised the story’s sense of place:

[“Atlantic City”] captures the very essence of its location; it portrays the characters in a vivid reality; it uses the real language of the people involved.

For Rob Burdock, Barry turned the ordinary into something more:

The main ‘star’ of this story is James, a lad who would be considered unremarkable in almost any other setting. Yet in this ramshackle arcade – which in itself can be best described as ordinary and plain – James stands on a pedestal as a god among men (and women), and Barry exalts him magnificently.

There are also further positive write-ups of “Atlantic City” and its collection, There Are Little Kingdoms, from Mel u; Andrew of Slightly Read; Elaine Chiew for The Short Review; Rozz Lewis; and Marc Goldin for Laura Hird’s New Review.

So, how did you find “Atlantic City”?

Book notes: Manu Joseph and J.R. Crook

18th August 2012 / / 2 Comments

Manu Joseph, The Illicit Happiness of Other People (2012)

In 1990s Madras, journalist Ousep Chacko spends his days trying to find out what caused his teenage son Unni to commit suicide three years ago.

All Ousep has to work with are a few of Unni’s comics (Unni having been a talented cartoonist), and the possibility of talking to Somen Pillai, an elusive former school friend of Unni’s. Elsewhere in Ousep’s life, his wife Mariamma is losing her grip on reality and sometimes wishes him dead; and his younger son Thoma is developing a crush on a neighbouring girl. Piecing what happened to Unni might be the only thing that could bring the family back together – that is, if it doesn’t pull them apart.
The plot of Manu Joesph’s second novel runs in ever increasing circles, revisiting old points to reveal a little more each time. We’re aware early on that Unni was at times disruptive at school; but the complete picture of how and why only emerges later, casting a different light on what we knew. Likewise, Unni’s worldview comes into focus only gradually, a tense and intriguing process. Added to this are some striking observations; for example: “From their dark windows and doorways people stand and gaze, looking bored, expecting a greater boredom to reach them; it is as if they know that the extraordinary does not exist.” The Illicit Happiness of Other People is an engaging read that leaves readers with plenty to think about afterwards.
(This review also appears at We Love This Book.)
J.R. Crook, Sleeping Patterns (2012)

Jamie Crook is the latest recipient of the Luke Bitmead Bursary for unpublished writers, which leads to a publishing contract with Legend Press; so here’s his winning novel, Sleeping Patterns. It’s presented as a set of story-fragments sent by a character named ‘Jamie Crook’ (deceased in the book’s present) to Annelie Strandli. The fragments tell of how Jamie and Annelie came to know each other as students, as well as a third student named Berry Walker. Annelie found herself drawn to Berry, an aspiring writer; but finding a hidden manuscript of his made her reconsider what she thought she knew.

Sleeping Patterns is a novel of piecing together the truth, on several levels. Just as Annelie constructs an image of Berry from the pieces of his manuscript, so the reader has to construct what happens in Crook’s novel from the textual fragments presented out of chronological order. There are hints in each layer of narrative that what we’re reading has been shaped for some other purpose, and secrets to uncover to the very end. That mystery keeps one reading, but Sleeping Patterns also gives cause to reflect on how far we can really know people, no matter how well we think we do. This is an intriguing start to Crook’s career, and it’ll be interesting to see what he writes next.

Sunday Story Society Reminder: “Atlantic City”

16th August 2012 / / 0 Comments

Sunday Story Society time is coming around again; this week, we’ll be talking about “Atlantic City” by Kevin Barry. The story is available to download here as a PDF from Thresholds, the University of Chichester’s International Short Story Forum.

“Atlantic City” is taken from Kevin Barry’s first collection, There Are Little Kingdoms (2007), which won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Barry has since published a novel, City of Bohane (2011); and a second collection, Dark Lies the Island (2012). One of the stories from the latter, “Beer Trip to Llandudno”, won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.

Head back here on Sunday, when we’ll compare notes on “Atlantic City”.

Borrowing

15th August 2012 / / 5 Comments
Photo credit: © Copyright Mark Anderson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
***
This building is Huddersfield Central Library. Strictly speaking, it’s not my local library (that would be a branch library, which I’m pleased still tohave); but it is the one I visit most often, and it’s where all my current loans are from. I don’t do that many library posts, but I thought it was a good time to go through what I’ve borrowed and why.
***

J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

I borrowed this because it’s the current monthly read of the NYRB Classics group on Goodreads, which I’d had recommended to me and wanted to join. OK, so the edition I borrowed was a Penguin one, but still… I’ve finished the book now, and rather enjoyed it: it tells of a soldier returned from the First World War, who takes on the job of uncovering a medieval wall-painting in a Yorkshire village church. Carr elegantly carries the theme of uncovering the hidden through to the novella’s relationships, and the whole is rather engaging.

Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

Another Penguin Modern CIassic, set in a bizarre retirement home. I saw it on the same shelf as the Carr, had never heard of book or author – but it looked interesting. ‘One of the most original, joyful, satisfying and quietly original novels of the twentieth century,’ says Ali Smith on the back cover – sounds worth a read to me.

M. John Harrison, Viriconium

It’s been my intention for some time now to read M. John Harrison, because I never really have. Now I’m going to do it: the Viriconium omnibus first, then the Kefahuci Tract trilogy by next spring – because chances are that Empty Space will be shortlisted for the Clarke next year.

Dorothy Whipple, High Wages

A number of bloggers speak very highly of Persephone Books, who republish ‘neglected classics by C20th (mostly women) writers’ (says their website). I’ve never read one of their volumes myself, so when I saw this in the library, I thought I’d give it a try. The book itself is a very nicely-produced object; and the story – an exploration of retail in 1920s Lancashire – is something I wouldn’t generally go for, so I’ll be interested to see what it’s like.

Banana Yoshimoto, Hardboiled & Hard Luck

Another book I picked up on spec. Yoshimoto was on my list of authors I wanted to read; this double novella was on the shelves; so why not? I mean, that kind of serendipity is one of the great things about libraries, isn’t it?

(Post cross-linked to Library Loot on The Captive Reader.)

Liz Jensen, The Uninvited (2012)

13th August 2012 / / 3 Comments

Liz Jensen’s The Rapture was one of my favourite reads a couple of years back; now she has returned with what could be seen very much as a companion piece. The Uninvited also sees a scientist investigating unusual human phenomena which turn out to herald apocalypse, and also shares a focus on the personal side of events.

Jensen’s protagonist this time around is Hesketh Lock, an anthropologist investigating corporate scandals. Hesketh’s latest assignment takes a bizarre turn when Sunny Chen, the whistle-blower from a Taiwanese timber company, throws himself into a pulping machine. That’s only the first of several similar incidents worldwide; at the same time, children begin to kill their families violently. Hesketh, a pattern-spotter by both profession and inclination, searches for a connection – even when his experiences lead him down a path that goes against all his rational instincts.

Again as with The Rapture, Jensen’s protagonist comes under pressure in the areas of life where he feels it most acutely. Hesketh’s ability to analyse and find patterns was where he felt most secure, and of course now that’s now being undermined by the apparently irrational crisis. However, he’s also feeling tested in the area of relationships: his Asperger’s Syndrome has made them difficult enough already, such that Hesketh has had to leave his partner Kaitlin. But at least he’s always felt that he knows how to communicate with his stepson Freddy – and this area of stability is now also being challenged.

Jensen handles the characterisation of Hesketh well. His personal quirks (such as a fascination with origami, and an instinctive knowledge of the Dulux colour chart) come across not as gimmicks but as anchor-points in his life (symbolically so when he folds origami models from the pages of a medical report that he’d rather not face). Hesketh is not characterised simply as someone who is great with data but inept with people – Jensen is subtler than that. The protagonist does have his difficulties with relating with people, but for the most part, he gets by. There are a couple of conversations where we realise (and Hesketh doesn’t) that he’s saying the wrong thing; but the effect is jarring – they stand out because they’re so infrequent.

The character who, for me, most brings home the emotional impact of The Uninvited’s catastrophe is not Hesketh, but his boss, Ashok Sharma. In some ways, Sharma is the opposite of Hesketh: he comes across as a smooth operator who knows what to say to everyone. But, when the plight affecting the world’s children knocks on Sharma’s door, he can’t stay that way, and becomes a deeper character. That two such different individuals as Hesketh and Sharma are so strongly affected is a way of showing just how far-reaching The Univited’s crisis is.

In its later sections, The Uninvited focuses more strongly on its disaster-novel aspect, and I don’t think it works quite so well – but I must acknowledge that this could just be because find the actual nature of what’s happening in Jensen’s novel is less interesting to me than exploring the characters’ reactions to it. The Uninvited seems to me to be less about human response to catastrophe than response to the threat of catastrophe, and the great emotional challenge that entails. The challenge for Hesketh Lock is to see how – or even if – he can deal with extreme emotional situations. What Jensen does so well in The Uninvited is to explore a global problem through the microcosm of one person’s life.

Elsewhere
Liz Jensen’s website
Arc Quarterly video interview with Jensen
Some other reviews of The Uninvited: Thirteen O’Clock; Curiosity Killed the Bookworm; Pamreader; Justine Jordan for The Guardian.

Sunday Story Society 2012 Schedule

12th August 2012 / / 0 Comments

I left a couple of slots open in the Sunday Story Society schedule; but now I’ve decided what’s going in them. So here is what we’ll be talking about for the  rest of the year:

19 Aug: “Atlantic City” by Kevin Barry

02 Sept: “The Merchant of Shadows” by Angela Carter

16 Sept: “Two Ways of Leaving” by Alois Hotschnig

30 Sept: “Drifting House” by Krys Lee

14 Oct: “Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring” by M. John Harrison

28 Oct: “The Disappearance of Miranda Željko” by Rebecca Makkai

11 Nov: “Reflux” by José Saramago

25 Nov: “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard

09 Dec: The winner of the BBC International Short Story Award (to be announced)

You can click on the titles above to read any of the stories. If the BBC Short Story Award is running to the same schedule as last year, it should be announced at the end of September, and the winning story made available on line shortly after. Assuming it is, we’ll discuss it in the December slot.

Any queries on the above, drop me a line; and don’t forget you can also follow the Society on Twitter and Facebook.]

See you back here this time next week to discuss Kevin Barry’s “Atlantic City”!

Book notes: William Wharton and P.Y. Betts

10th August 2012 / / 2 Comments

William Wharton, Birdy (1978)

Al and Birdy were both scarred by their experiences in the Second World War. For Al, the damage was largely physical – he now has a jaw made of glass – but for, Birdy, it was mental. Now in a psychiatric hospital, Birdy is living up to his name and acting like a bird. Al has been brought in to try to get through to his old friend; he recounts to Birdy stories of their younger years in Philadelphia. Alternating chapters chronicle Birdy’s developing fascination with birds as a child.

Birdy has recently been republished in the UK by The Friday Project (along with Shrapnel, a previously unpublished war memoir of William Wharton’s). As a first-time reader of Wharton, this is a powerful book, because of the way it depicts such a vivid character as Birdy becoming lost in his own mind. Al’s engaging reminiscences show how enterprising and resourceful he and Birdy were; in Birdy’s chapters, these qualities are applied to the keeping of birds. Wharton portrays Birdy’s slide from this to a too-close association with birds convincingly, which gives Al’s later attempts to reach Birdy all the more force.

Some other reviews of Birdy: The Bookbag; Read with Style; an appreciation of Willam Wharton at Eleventh Stack.

P.Y. Betts, People Who Say Goodbye (1989)

In the 1930s, Phyllis Betts wrote several short stories, contributions to Graham Greene’s magazine Night and Day, and one novel (French Polish)… then she wasn’t heard of again for another fifty years, until Christopher Hawtree tracked her down to a Welsh smallholding; she was eventually persuaded to write this memoir, which I’m reading in a lovely hardback edition from Slightly Foxed.

People Who Say Goodbye is a joy to read, principally because Betts is so engaging, both as a writer and character. She has a knack for identifying the telling details that bring the people from her childhood to life; such as Dr Biggs, who pronounced ‘bowels’ as two syllables, and who treated all ills with a swift examination by stethoscope, followed by a prescription of brown cough mixture and red tonic. The young Phyllis and her mother also had a robust, no-nonsense attitude to life (‘What happens to all those dead people who are put into graves?’ asks Phyllis. ‘They rot,’ her mother repies).

But that quotation points also to the undercurrent of darkness in the book. Living through the First World War – and especially with a hospital down the road – the reality of death was never far from Phyllis’s life. As Betts puts it, the people who say goodbye don’t come back. It’s the careful balance of moods that makes this memoir such a rewarding read.

Some other reviews of People Who Say Goodbye: Stuck in a Book; 20th Century Vox; I Prefer Reading.

This book fulfils the Biography category of the Mixing It Up Challenge 2012.

Book notes: collections by Jon Gower and Tim Maughan

8th August 2012 / / 1 Comment

Jon Gower, Too Cold for Snow (2012)

There are funny stories in Too Cold for Snow; dark stories; poignant ones, too – but all are built on a base of ordinary Welsh life, which Jon Gower then transforms in some way. In the title story, we meet Boz, a jingle-composer who answered a job ad and is now in Siberia, working on a documentary about a reindeer-herding people. Gower creates an effective contrast between Boz’ and the herders’ lifestyles, and shows how the gap between them starts to be bridged.

‘The Pit’ is the tale of a miner who became trapped in a collapsed pit, and had to take extreme measures to survive. A borderline-supernatural twist makes this piece a genuine chiller. ‘TV Land’ is a satirical treatment of celebrity culture, in which a burger van proprietor who uses rather… unusual ingredients is invited on a local chat show and his secrets exposed. Gower’s story is absurd, but only just, and has significant bite because of that.

‘White Out’ is a beautifully written piece in which an avalanche has covered north Wales; a sheep farmer explores the ruined landscape, encountering no one but a mysterious young girl. The closing revelation is especially moving, in one of the highlights of a varied and textured collection.

Tim Maughan, Paintwork (2011)

Paintwork is a collection of three stories set in a near future where the online space has become thoroughly integrated with individuals’ sensorial. Tim Maughan’s tales explore issues of control and authenticity in that world.

The story ‘Paintwork’ itself concerns 3Cube, a guerrilla artist whose speciality is replacing QR codes on billboards with his own, to give people artistic vistas rather than commercial messages. But the artist finds that his latest work is being vandalised, faster than should be possible. Subsequent events 3Cube to question whether he’s behind the times, with his romanticism and insistence on old-fashioned methods (such as hand-cut stencils) – and to question how much he’s in charge of his own work.

Similar considerations emerge in ‘Havana Augmented’, whose young protagonists have created an augmented-reality version of a popular fighting game. Business, government, and a major gaming clan all take an interest, and a game on the streets of Havana becomes a fight for something deeper. Perhaps this story isn’t as complex as ‘Paintwork’ in its examination of issues, but it is engaging nonetheless.

The structural similarities of Paintwork’s stories can make individual aspects of them less satisfactory – the beginning of ‘Paparazzi’ (a piece in which a journalist is sent into an MMORPG to investigate a prominent gamer) is a little heavy on exposition in comparison to the other two, though the sting-in-the-tale ending may be the best in the book. But the overall impression left by Maughan’s collection impresses most – the strong sense of tackling issues of a kind that might face us just around the corner.

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2025 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑