Adventures in reading
Fyfe Dangerfield from Guillemots has a solo album out, and I’ve reviewed it for Culture Revival. I really like Guillemots, and I’m pleased to report that Fly Yellow Moon is a good listen, too. YOu can read the review here, and there’s a taster for the album below.
Video: ‘She Needs Me’
Tonight, More4 broadcast the first episode of The TV Book Club, the successor to the Richard & Judy Book Club, but extended to half an hour and presented by a panel of five celebrities (Jo Brand, Nathaniel Parker, Laila Rouass, Dave Spikey and Gok Wan). I never paid much attention in the R&J days, but watched this partly out of curiosity, and partly because I already knew the book under discussion, Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger (my review of that book is here). And I’m left with one main thought: is that it?
Each week, we were told at the beginning, the panel would be joined by a guest who would take part in the discussion and also talk about their own book. This week’s guest was Chris Evans, who was interviewed about his autobioraphy for most of the first half. This actually ended up being the most in-depth item on the whole programme; but,. as I’m not terribly interested in celebrity autobiographies, I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm for it.
After the Evans segment, the show blew its own trumpet with a short item on the author Cecelia Ahern, and how her career was transformed by being chosen for the Book Club back in 2004. And that was the end of part one.
Part two arrived, and were we now going to talk about the week’s choice? No, we weren’t. Instead, we had a filmed item in which the comedian Mark Watson asked people if they knew what various obscure words meant. (This was in relation to a recently-published book called The Completely Superior Person’s Book of Words by Peter Bowler.) Watson was, as ever, entertaining; and, at least, this was telling me about a book of which I was unlikely to have heard. But, still, this item was essentially a makeweight in a programme that really needed more substance.
And, finally, we made it to The Little Stranger. First, a short interview in which Waters talked about the book; then the actual discussion, which lasted less than five minutes. In a half-hour show. How disappointing.
So, the first episode of The TV Book Club was unsatisfactory on just about all counts. It didn’t succeed as a book club, because barely five minutes in total were devoted to the chosen book. It didn’t succeed as a magazine programme about books, because it didn’t cover enough new/unfamiliar books, or talk about its subjects in any real depth. We don’t have that many TV shows about books in the UK as it is — but new ones really need to be better than this.
This may turn out to be less of a review of a book than a ‘working-through’ of one, because I’m well aware that I haven’t grasped everything that Galileo’s Dream is trying to do, and so can’t appreciate it as much as I would have liked. But I’d like to set down my thoughts all the same.
It would be quite easy, I think, to describe this novel in a way that sounds like a bad movie pitch: Galileo receives visitors from the future, who take him back (forward!) to their time in an attempt to stave off a threat to humanity itself! All of this is accurate, but makes the book sound gimmicky; it’s to Robinson’s great credit that Galileo’s Dream has far more gravitas than that.
Two narratives combine: one a fictionalised account of Galileo’s life and career (beginning with his work on the telescope), which is here punctuated by visits from a stranger who nudges Galileo’s researches along, and later transports him forward 1,400 years, where humanity has colonised Jupiter’s moons and is debating how best to approach an alien intelligence it has found there. Galileo, the stranger thinks, could help sway the different factions towards his preferred solution – but his motives run even deeper than that.
These two settings mesh together somewhat awkwardly, partly because the future society is depicted rather more vaguely; and partly because of a clash of styles – the 31st-century sections are generally more novelistic, whilst those set in the 17th century are typically written more in the manner of a historical biography. That said, all these choices are justified – Gailieo’s visits to the future are episodic in nature (during those times, he appears in Italy to have fainted, so those visits are also dreams of a sort to him); and Galileo’s Dream is framed as a particular kind of text, which accounts for its different modes of telling – and the combination does work well enough to be convincing.
Galileo’s Dream is a long, detailed novel; and some of its passages drag on too long (though it could be that I feel this because I didn’t know all that much about Galileo’s life). But there are also brilliant moments, and some of the best are also among the most dense with information. Robinson brings vividly to life the sheer amount of painstaking work that would have been involved (and that, I’m sure, still is involved) in scientific experimentation; the character traits that could go with it (Galileo is portrayed as well-meaning but difficult to get along with, and as not paying attention to the political landscape, which ultimately proves his undoing); but also the wonder of creating knowledge.
Another aspect of Galileo’s Dream is that (as I read it) Robinson seeks to reflect the novel’s scientific concepts in the narrative itself. So, for example, Galileo learns that changing the past could change the future; and then, each time he visits Rome, he feels that it’s a different place each time, because the political climate keeps changing. For me, the best example of this comes after Galileo is told of the myriad possible time streams that exist and that all pasts, presents and futures are tangled together; in a beautifully written passage, he then returns to his time and wonders what’s the point of doing anything.
I think this last area was where I missed out the most – I sense there’s quite a lot on which I didn’t pick up – and, since it’s so central, that naturally affects how much I took from Galileo’s Dream. I don’t think it’s an entirely successful work, but I am glad to have read it – it was my first Kim Stanley Robinson novel, and I intend to read more.
This book has been nominated for the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Read all my posts on the Award here.
Now up at Culture Revival is my review of Cross the Sea, a maritime flavoured EP from a Southampton band named Haunted Stereo. It has some really good songs, and marks Haunted Stereo out as an act to watch. Here they are performing live for BBC Radio Solent:
Video: ‘Wow Wow Wow’ (live)
I have a new review up at Culture Revival, this time of ‘Toxic Crusaders’, a song by Randolph Chabot of Detroit, who makes music under the name Deastro. This is a nifty little dance track, as you’ll hear below.
I went to see Snow Patrol at the weekend, and what a great night it was. A brilliant performance, and even a surprise guest appearance by Elbow (it was as much a surpise to Snow Patrol as anyone else). My review of the gig is now up at Culture Revival, and you can read it here.
Video: ‘Just Say Yes’ (live)
This post is about the inclusion (or otherwise) of spoilers in reviews, and was partly inspired by two posts on the subject (here and here) by Paul Kincaid (‘partly’ because I’ve had these thoughts in my mind for a while anyway, without writing them down; and also because this is not intended to be a direct response to Kincaid’s thoughts).
I don’t like spoilers in reviews, and I try to leave them out of mine; but there’s an issue, I think, over what exactly constitutes a spoiler. In my view, revealing plot points or character developments does not equate to spoiling per se; it depends on why a reviewer makes the revelation. I think that a review should try to illuminate the work under discussion, to enrich the reading experience for someone else; and I’ve been known to go as far as quoting the final sentence of a text, with that aim in mind.
What a review shouldn’t do is detract from the reading experience; if it does, that’s what I’d call a spoiler. But here we tread in uncertain waters because, as Kincaid says, people read books in different ways, and what may be a major revelation to one reader may be something another reader has seen many times before. I’ll try to set out my view by using a specific example – The Lord of the Rings.
Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that, by novel’s end, the forces of Sauron are defeated and the One Ring destroyed? I would say not (except perhaps for the most inexperienced of readers), because it’s a convention of this kind of story that “the heroes” will triumph – we expect it to happen, so it’s not really a spoiler to say that it does.
Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that Gollum, not Frodo, is the one ultimately responsible for destroying the Ring, or that the hobbits return to the Shire to find it ruined? I would say yes, because these are events which, to an extent, subvert our expectations of what will happen. Equally, though, there may be readers who would be happy for these to be revealed as illustrations of some of the book’s themes.
Is it a spoiler for The Lord of the Rings to say that Frodo’s resolve is tested whilst he bears the Ring, or that the ultimate defeat of evil is more problematic than the characters could suspect?. These comments hint at the points made above without stating what happens outright; and this is the kind of thing I prefer to do in my reviews. I don’t think these are spoilers, though of course others may disagree.
In the end, we all have to decide where to draw our own line when it comes to spoilers. Personally, I’d be wary of revealing major developments, even if they did help explore a point; but I’m also interested in testing the limits of what I think it’s acceptable to reveal. I would always hope, though, that what I write about a book will not spoil it for anyone.
In his début novel, Brian DeLeeuw brings us a story about two boys. One of the boys is real, while the other isn’t – but you may have a hard time deciding which is which. Our narrator is Daniel, who met Luke in the playground, when the latter was six. Luke is the only person who can see him; yet Daniel seems no common-or-garden ‘imaginary friend’, having apparently attained consciousness. Daniel returns home with Luke, to find a household under strain: Luke’s mother, Claire, is fragile, still affected by her own mother’s suicide; when an incident brings matters to a head, she leaves, taking Luke with her.
One day, Claire has a surprise for Luke – she’s bought him a pet dog. This new friend starts to take Daniel’s place in Luke’s life, so much so that Daniel finds his very self disintegrating. In a bid for survival, Daniel tricks Luke into poisoning the dog with some of Claire’s medication. She, of course, doesn’t believe her son when he says that Daniel told him to do it, and takes Luke to see a psychiatrist. Soon after, Luke is able to restrain Daniel, eventually locking him away inside his head, for twelve whole years. But, when Luke is eighteen, Daniel re-emerges – with his own ideas of what Luke should do, who Luke should be.
In This Way I Was Saved is quite a difficult book to evaluate. How do you judge characterisation, for example, when you can’t even trust that the narrator is – well, is, full stop? Well, let’s see: DeLeeuw has created a chilling presence in Daniel, a narrator who’s just that bit too knowing, whose voice is that bit too articulate. Not to mention that his opinions are also pretty vile; Daniel has little patience for humans and their messy emotions: when Luke finds a girl in whose company he can relax and forget his cares, Daniel just takes the view that Luke is being insincere – and the situation Daniel then engineers is not a pleasant one. As a portrait of such a cold individual, the book is a great success.
Yet there’s ambiguity here, too, as it’s possible to read Daniel as being entirely a product of Luke’s delusion. This is a more difficult reading to make, because the narration naturally invites us to view Daniel as a separate entity; and I’m not sure that the novel sustains its ambiguity through to the end. But it’s fascinating to read a scene and see it happening in two different ways simultaneously; DeLeeuw interweaves the possibilities well. The reading of Daniel-as-delusion also deepens the book’s portrait of people and lives unravelling; it’s harrowing for characters and readers alike.
In This Way I Was Saved is not without its flaws. I feel a sense of distance in the progression of the plot – as though it’s happening rather than being made to happen – which I think arises because neither Luke nor Daniel is able to truly drive the story directly. Nevertheless, I am impressed with what DeLeeuw has done in his novel. It’s easy to assume, from the first few pages, that you know who Daniel is and what has happened. I read most of the book thinking, it can’t be that simple – and, happily, it’s not.
No more of that, though, for it’s the road to spoilers. To conclude: In This Way I Was Saved is an intriguing puzzle of a book which takes you into a mind that’s not a comfortable place to visit, but that visit is compelling all the same. Whose mind is it, though? There’s a question to ponder…
Now up at Culture Revival is my review of Over the Sun, the first album by Rodina, a jazz-pop outfit from Leeds. It’s quite a mixed write-up, and I’m not sure I’d have listened to the album had I not been sent it for review; so I leave it to you to make what you will of my thoughts.
The full review is available to read here.
It took some searching to track down any of Rodina’s music that I could embed here, but I found the acoustic performance below. It’s more stripped down than the album version; but there’s also a music player at the band’s website (linked above).
Video: ‘Runaway Bay’ (live)
David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide is one of those books that takes concepts like ‘novel’ and ‘short story collection’, tears them up into tiny pieces, and leaves the reader to make sense of the result. It comprises six chapters/stories, the longest of which takes up 170 of the 230 pages. The five shorter pieces may or may not take place within the same chronology; the novella probably doesn’t, because it contradicts the rest of the book – but it depends how you interpret what happens.
What, then, is the purpose of this narrative structure? To answer that, we have to go back to the event around which the text revolves. Roy, Vann’s protagonist, is a boy of twelve when his parents divorce, and not much older when his dentist-turned-fisherman father shoots himself in the head. The first chapter essentially tells the story of this; the others explore how the characters (in particular Roy and his parents) are affected by those events.
Vann pulls off a tricky literary feat in depicting three characters who all have personal qualities that would, in isolation, put one off wanting to know them; yet are still sympathetic, because we see enough of the whole person. Roy’s mother Elizabeth is the one of whom we see the least (the father-son relationship is most prominent, after all); but we nevertheless gain a sense of how profoundly she has been affected by her husband’s actions (his unfaithfulness was what precipitated the divorce). After the suicide, Elizabeth is unable to hold down a relationship for any length of time, actively pushing her lovers away. This is unfair on those men, of course; but, after what Elizabeth has been through, it’s no wonder that she might behave in such a way.
One is far less inclined to sympathise with Jim, Roy’s father; and I don’t think he does ultimately inspire sympathy – nor empathy, for that matter. Acceptance, perhaps. Jim’s character is most fully explored in the novella-chapter, wherein thirteen-year-old Roy leaves his mother’s California home to spend a year with his father in a cabin on a remote Alaskan island. The first part of this story, told from the boy’s viewpoint, establishes the pair’s routine: attempting to live self-sufficiently during the day (though they came ill-prepared, and pay dearly for it), and Jim crying himself to sleep at night. This cycle could have been too repetitive, but Vann maintains his narrative momentum through a combination of careful plotting that shakes things up every so often, and quietly skilful writing which carries a suggestion that all this physical activity is displacement activity, so father and son don’t have to confront the issues between them.
They do so eventually, of course, and Jim confesses his inadequacy – he knows the type of man he ought to be, but not how to become that way. We gain more insight into Jim’s state of mind in the second part of the novella, where the viewpoint shifts to him, and the mood changes subtly. The intensely purposeful activity of the first part now gains a frantic edge, and a sense that Jim is buckling under the pressure of reality. He becomes something of a tragic figure as the tale progresses, and starts to redeem himself in the final sentences – but, alas, by then it’s too late for him.
On the face of it, Roy would seem to have come through things relatively unscathed: his first-person narrative voice is calm, measured, reasonable – which makes it all the more disarming when, in that same voice, he tells of smashing all the windows in his mother’s house. At the age of thirty, Roy returns to the Alaskan island of Ketchikan, where he grew up – an attempt to lay the ghosts of the past to rest, but it turns out to be misguided. By the very end of the book, however, Roy appears to have come to terms with the events of his childhood – but his method is rather drastic. If he has indeed made peace with life, it’s an uneasy truce – which is perhaps the best he could have hoped for.
Legend of a Suicide is an intensely personal book (it is dedicated to Vann’s father, who himself committed suicide); there is a sense of protagonist and author alike working through their experiences – but not in a way that makes the reader feel unwelcome. This is a book that asks for thought and attention, and repays them richly. The title suggests an event which has grown larger than itself, which echoes long after it has finished. One might say something similar – albeit with more positive implications – about these stories.
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