Hux

The Hospital (1989) Ahmed Bouanani I should start by saying this is the kind of book which, had I read it at another time, in another mood, I might have despised it. I think this is precisely the kind of book where you have to let it catch you at the right time, in the right frame of mind, otherwise it will infuriate you. On this occasion, however, I was evidently in that very place because I rather liked this and found some of the writing, and the almost delirious fever dream nature of the piece, to be very effective, often beautiful. I only bring up the idea of being in the right mood because I don't want to recommend it lightly as I'm sure there will be people who will loathe this thing. It would be too simplistic to say it's a Marmite book; more accurate to say it's one of those books that will need to find you (you know, the way cats choose their owners, like that). Anyway... The basic premise (and it is very basic) is that a man is taken to hospital by the sea in Morocco. From this point on, the book becomes a plotless narrative whereby the narrator, without name, flits in and out of consciousness, daydreams, fever, nightmares, and an uncertain reality even when awake. The whole book is a swirling madness of delirious hallucination and reminiscing. The hospital itself never seems to have any patients who recover, or any doctors (there is mention of a male nurse) and the other patients our narrator does meet (all given rudimentary nicknames like Guzzler, Rover, and Fartface) appear equally lost or forgotten. There's no sense of time, only a building, Moroccan heat, and ambiguous illness. The narrator is often hard to follow but this is compensated for by the sheer quality of writing which often hits wonderful heights. Sometimes you will read a sentence more than once just so that you can enjoy it all over again. I was reborn, quite despite myself, in a worn down universe, amid a vanquished, humiliated humanity, resigned to an absurd destiny of flowering graves that led to an uncertain future in intolerable paradises. I was heading toward a mythology of survival, leaving behind in my rotting limbs a prehistory of one thousand and four hundred years of hate, vainglory, and putrid nostalgia, under the clear sky of a false Andalusia where our murders has been in the making since our birth. Right now, he's standing in front of his childhood home with the despair of someone who's completely lost, trying to recognise a door with a bronze knocker, a low building with windows so minuscule he can't imagine what purpose they could serve, a place that once observed him growing up on thin grasshopper legs, the neighbours' oddly horizontal stairs, dark and stinking of urine and weak stew, which in a faraway time provided a refuge for a romantic idyll. The book isn't perfect and as I said at the beginning there are those (I'm certain) who will simply hate this thing. But some of the writing really did seduce me, to the extent that I found the piece to be ultimately mesmerising. Funnily enough, there are obvious comparisons with The Blind Owl by Hedayat which makes sense but only in so much that there is a dreamlike quality to events (otherwise not much in common given that I hated The Blind Owl). Likewise, there are Kafka references but I've always viewed Kafka as a man who dealt with the nightmare of bureaucracy rather than an eddying descent into a surreal and delirious lunacy. This, to me, was a more delicate and pleasurable madness, intriguing, odd, and immensely hypnotic. You can smell the incense, feel the desert heat, the dry atmosphere, and almost taste the hish-hash. The book is strangely pleasing, like being stoned, but always with a sense of comfort and ease. Despite Bouanani tackling death and disease, and, despite the curious, other worldly setting of the book, it never felt to me like it was ever bleak or dark, only lost in romantic thought and confused memory. I think I liked it better during the periods when we were somewhere inside his delirium, his dreams, his ethereal delusions, rather than when we were present with him in the (admittedly unclear) reality of the hospital. Not perfect by any stretch (and not to everyone's tastes) but this one kinda spoke to me. 7/10

Perfection (2025) Vincenzo Latronico There was a British sitcom in 2005 called Nathan Barley, created by the brilliant Chris Morris, which focused on the emergence of the internet hipster, a clownish nightmare of performative cool in the face of ennui and pointlessness all while using modern parlance and consuming the newest, most pointless products whilst espousing safe opinions but packaging them as edgy. In his own words he was 'a self-facilitating media node.' This is what we have here, but in book form, only it uses a third person narration to colour the dead-behind-the-eyes lives of its expats protagonists, Tom and Anna, and forces their relationship to embody a more up-to-date version of this awful type of vacuous human. With added likes, subscribers, and boredom. Latronico laments (via this flimsy neo-liberal, Berlin based couple) the banal aspects of being bored, comfortable, and safe; of being middle-class people living in the West and engaging with all the right-on facilities, opinions, and technology. He hits all the obvious targets with accuracy and (necessary) venom, but it's nothing new and that's the problem with the book, all his targets are easy -- tediously so. They range from the monotonous lifestyle of eating avocado on toast, coffee shops, internet culture, social media, and the endless consumption of digestible left-wing opinions and branding which, under the slightest scrutiny, are bland and performative, possessing no real bite or consequence. These people give monthly donations to all the most righteous causes, read the approved of media and embrace the correct and most noble narratives (BLM, LGBT, etc). They like art but the kind which is demonstrably bad (and therefore annoys the uneducated yokels). They worry that they aren't doing anything interesting with their sex lives. They worry that they aren't vegan enough, environmentally conscientious enough, aren't in touch with the plight of the poor, the immigrants, the refugees, the oppressed. And so on. If your idea of fun is tired social media (and all its ironic smugness) in book form then go nuts. And don't get me wrong, it is kinda fun to play along and acknowledge the tedium of this kind of western existence, the mundane and stale daily grind which inevitably manifests as a debilitating ennui. But the fundamental problem I had with the book (ignoring the the fact that his writing isn't fun to read) is that it lacks any meaningful authenticity. This polemic (because that's what it is) is wrapped up in the contrived narrative of a couple that aren't real, don't feel real, and serve no purpose other than to be cardboard placeholders, caricatures and punching bags, for his painfully clichéd diatribe. In that regard, this is a book that is very similar to something like 'Harassment Architecture' by Mike Ma but done with a greater literary flourish therefore making it more palatable to the chattering classes (his mimicry of Perec will also get them excited). But lets not kid ourselves, it's the same thing -- whining about the nightmare of modernity. In fact, I would say this is less original and more derivative. And the fact that Latronico's audience are the very bedwetters he is satirising makes it worse. Had this been written by someone from a council estate, or an immigrant (the kind which Tom and Anna romanticise), then it might have had more impact, and certainly would have been more insightful. But instead it's the bored middle-class analysing and satirising the bored middle-class. Putting the content to one side, the book's prose is not fun to read (at least not for me). As mentioned, it openly mimics Perec (not a good thing in my opinion but each to their own) and Latronico acknowledges the book as a kind of sequel to 'Things: A Story of The Sixties' and utilises a narrative style which uses past, present, and future tense in the narration creating a sense of (unpleasant) detachment and voyeurism. This only further distances the reader from his already unconvincing false creations, Tom and Anna, describing them as abstracts rather than people. He uses the word 'would' over and over again to describe his protagonist's experiences and views. This is obviously a deliberate choice and the final chapter (named Future) switches to 'will' to reiterate this past, present, and future presentation, but it's not fun to read and, again, only results in a feeling of being outside the character's lives, to such an extent that they don't feel like real people at all, only deformed props for Latronico to hang his aloof condescension on. More precisely he turns the couple into a facsimile of human beings who must endure the banality and boredom of a world he clearly finds distasteful. Sure, these people are vapid and empty (that's the point) but that doesn't mean his language needs to be. I struggled to find a paragraph that didn't bore me. Yes, Latronico knows he's one of them (so what) and hits his targets but given that they're fish, inside a barrel, that are already dead, it's not much of an accomplishment. And like I said, this has been done by others and done better. Nathan Barley is two decades old now after all. We get it. Late stage capitalism, blah blah blah, by-the-numbers liberalism, blah blah blah, postmodern ironic, blah blah blah, IKEA, Vegan oat milk, FaceBook, Latte, Twitter storm, Trans non-binary, gluten free biscuits, blah blah blah, ennui doesn't come from life being too hard, it comes from life being too easy, blah blah blah. We get it. We're all bored now and life is shhhhhhh and the only thing that makes us feel better about any of it is having enough self-awareness to know and point at it (and buying shiny things from Amazon). No one is more thrilled than me that middle-class people hate themselves but none of that changes the fact that the book isn't very original or very good. 4/10

A Canticle For Leibowitz (1959) Walter. M Miller I didn't know much about this book going in beyond the fact that it was a post-apocalyptic story. It had quite an impact on me though. Part One is set 500 years after a nuclear war and revolves around a 17-year-old monk named Brother Francis who inadvertently comes across a fallout shelter from the old world which may or may not contain relics from the order's founder, Leibowitz (a man who survived the war and later established the abbey). There is much discussion and excitement about these documents and as the years go by many people visit the abbey to investigate what has been found. Later, Brother Francis takes these documents to New Rome where the pope has agreed to make Leibowitz a saint. Part Two jumps ahead another 500 years. City states have developed, agriculture, warring clans, while the abbey continues to protect the relics. A religious scholar, Thon Taddeo, is sent from Texarkana to the abbey to examine the relics. Here he discovers that one of the young monks has already invented an electric light. Thon Taddeo believes he can advance upon this work. Part Three jumps ahead another 500 years and now civilisation is exploring space and using nuclear technology to colonise planets. The two major factions (the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy) are experiencing a cold war having both previously engaged in nuclear attacks. War threatens to explode again and so the monk, Zerchi, advises some of his brothers to take the relics and leave earth before the inevitable nuclear war begins. And sure enough, nuclear war follows. It's hard to review this book. I thought it was genuinely quite profound and powerful in its exploration of a human condition which is repetitious by nature, endlessly looping, our inevitable descent into regurgitating old experiences being beyond our control. Not to mention the fact that the book does this over such a vast period of time, reiterating our transient speck-like insignificance. Truth be told, I think it's a waste of time to warn about the dangers of repeating history because, as a species, we need to accept that this is precisely what we are always destined to do. What are the alternatives? Do we really think we're progressing towards something? I personally don't think so. And while Miller isn't clear one way or the other, he nonetheless allowed his cynicism to become almost tangible. The book has such an enormous scope. It's hard not to find it moving, impressive, exquisite. These three time periods demonstrate how unremarkable we are and yet equally how eternal. It's a clever idea, beautiful even, and, for the most part, it is executed very effectively. I was reminded of an episode of Star Trek Voyager (Blink of an Eye) where they encounter a planet where time moves faster than the rest of space. We initially see the planet's inhabitants as primitive people, then return to the ship. Then ten minutes later, we return to the planet to see that they're now more advanced and have developed new technologies. We return to the ship again. Ten minutes later we return to the planet to see that they're now on the verge of space exploration. It's fun to watch this whole world develop before your eyes. This book has the same feature but expanded and with greater depth. That all being said, however, the book isn't perfect and shares similar problems to all books that have disparate sections. Namely the fact that I really enjoyed part one and the simplicity of the post-apocalyptic environment and the character of brother Francis but had to leave all that behind and move on to new characters and environments for part two -- that can be jarring. In this instance, I didn't really care for part two and felt that the book slowed down quite significantly. Likewise, by the time you get to part three, Miller doesn't really have the time to flesh out his world or his characters (enough to make you care about them), and so it feels a little disjointed and hollow. If you read the three pieces as stand alone stories, the second and third would be found a little wanting. But when you put all three together, it does take on a more profound quality. And I acknowledge that. I also disliked the wandering Jew character and felt his (supernatural) presence slightly took away from the piece. Yet despite the fact that there are parts of the book that drag, where the writing is often a little dry, the overall idea of the piece -- its immense timescale and profound themes -- is enormously powerful. It's hard not to be moved by it, to sit back in awe at the magnificent cynicism of Miller's conclusions about mankind and find it all rather... well, beautiful. The book definitely resonated with me. And I will be thinking about its implications for a while. But ultimately, I came to the conclusion that the idea of the book is probably a little more impressive than the book itself. 7/10

Seiobo There Below (2008) Laszlo Krasnahorkai I have always struggled with Krasznahorkai. Even when I like him, even when I acknowledge his ability to produce exquisite prose, bleak landscapes, and fascinating characters, I have never really enjoyed reading him. This is generally something that I can put to one side when he gives me the dark, almost post-apocalyptic atmosphere of Satantango or The Melancholy of Resistance, but when he goes on these modern or ancient tangents, I find it rather unbearable. War and War was a real nightmare of uninteresting meandering stream-of-consciousness and this... well, this was probably the least I've ever enjoyed his work. Which is strange because this is essentially a collection of short stories, loosely related vignettes, under the umbrella of a wider theme. And I hated it. Maybe I only noticed it this time around (or maybe he utilised this particular technique more overtly here) but the sentences that never end became very tiresome. For Christ's sake, use a full stop from time to time, Laszlo. And can we dispense with the walls of text for a while? It serves what purpose, illuminates what aspect, elevates which ideas? Then we have the almost fetishisitc use of the em-dash for interrupted thought which is just relentless. It reminded me of that criticism of the German language made by Mark Twain where he points out that in German the word 'de-parted' can be interrupted by swathes of flowery language before the reader even knows what conclusion is coming ("The trunks now being ready he DE... after kissing his mother and sisters, and once pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the ample folds of her rich brown hair had tottered feebly down the stairs....[insert yet more language here]... whom she loved more dearly than life itself... PARTED.") What if it isn't the word departed? What if it's de-stroyed or de-fenestrated? You have to read all the waffle before you get to the verb, to the fundamental part which provides any context. At which point, you've read so much without any clarification that you have to go back and start again. I do not enjoy reading without context and there's a lot of that here. As for the content itself, as I said, it's a variety of stories (each more boring than the last) which really do test your patience. It starts with a bird, then a painting, then a wooden statue of Buddha, then a man wearing tap dancing shoes who's being followed. By this point, I was sincerely struggling to care. I found the writing strangely dull, forced, and inauthentic. There was another story about a guy in Greece. And one about a security guard at the Louvre but I found it almost painful to keep reading any of it. At no point can you say that the writing is bad, it's just overly stylised and designed to be challenging for its own sake. This seems to be deliberate and, dare I say it, performative. I have a theory: The more accessible literature becomes in the modern world (a thousand books published per day), the more we instinctively want to celebrate horrible and unpleasant writing as the most meaningful because it's difficult and challenging. We kid ourselves that this means it's good, at the very least means that it stands out against all that countless drivel and mediocrity which is suspiciously easy to read and overwhelms the bookshops now. Even worse, it results in the genuinely mediocre writing of people like Jon Fosse. We so desperately want literature to be significant, to be more than just... a story about a thing... that we encourage writers to go down this road, to appeal to the coffee shop hipsters who conflate obscurity with high status, and create a swamp of repetition and dense language which is deliberately unpleasant to read because we think this must demonstrate complexity. Maybe that's true for Fosse but for someone with genuine talent like Krasznahorkai, I think it only serves to make him squander his obvious talent. I wish writers like Krasznahorkai would stop trying so hard. I don't need literature to define my personality or provide me with a new philosophical outlook on existence. I don't need you to be a prophet or a sage. I just want you to write something beautiful. I hated this. 3/10

An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997) Iain Pears I can't remember where I heard about this one but it seemed like a fun historical, murder mystery romp that would distract me with an enjoyable escapist yarn. Sadly, I very quickly lost interest in the thing (around the first third). I can't say it's badly written or anything, but it's very formulaic, the kind of book that you might find at an airport masquerading as literary fiction (everything else does so why not this?). Despite being reasonably easy to read, it just didn't hold my attention at all. Again, not badly written for this kind of genre and, for those who enjoy such things, probably a satisfactory and competent example of it. But it wasn't my cup of tea. The book takes place in 1663 and is narrated by several people, all of whom are giving details of the same event from different perspectives (the death of Robert Groves and the arrest of Sarah Blundy as chief suspect). It begins with Marco de Cola, an Italian whose father has business interests in England where he travels. He finds himself in Oxford and, as an amateur physician, is greatly interested in the role of blood within the human body. He theorises that transfusion of a young person's blood to an old person will invigorate the older person. He meets Richard Lower and Robert Boyle (there are real people from history incorporated into the story) and with Lower he explains his theories and together they convince a young woman named Sarah Blundy (whose mother is ill) to give her blood to her mother as treatment. Not long after this a man named Groves dies and foul play is suspected (poison) and the chief suspect appears to be Sarah. I mostly enjoyed this first section of the book but was slightly baffled by the abrupt ending (it concludes with Cola leaving for Italy) only to realise that his section (at least his narration of events) were entirely over. Then comes the next instalment, this time we get the perspective of the disgraced Jack Prescott, son of a civil war traitor, his version of events evidently different from de Cola's in various ways, and this is where I was essentially done with the book (which is a shame because there was still a long way to go... the book is way too long!). After this we get another version of events (this time from John Wallis) which was the least satisfying part because he basically portrays de Cola as a scoundrel and a liar, re-imagining him into an entirely different person. I understand that these manuscripts all offer differing perspectives on purpose (it's part of the mosaic that ends with a twist) but given that de Cola was the only character I actually liked, it was not very enjoyable to see him suddenly turned into a villain, this portrayal jarring with what the opening section had provided. Again, I suppose it's the point, but my interest in the murder mystery aspect was already thin to begin with. After this, we get the events as told by Anthony Wood (probably the most revealing... if you still care at this point), but I was skim reading and ready to call it a day. You get a twist at the end (because of course you do) but the problem is it's entirely dependent upon you caring about the previous interpretations of events rather than the facts provided and the people encountered. The trouble I had is that I didn't care about those aspects. And if the narrator's are all highly unreliable (or at the least very conveniently leaving out vital aspects of the story) then the whole thing feels a little dishonest and requires that you invest in a story that is always changing. By this point, like I said, I simply didn't care who did the murder. It could have been Oliver Cromwell and I wouldn't have cared. Fundamentally, I think you have to enjoy this kind of genre to get the most out of it. Again, I can't say the book is bad. Of this particular genre, it's probably a pretty good standard, but it's not something I generally like to read (especially when it fails to grab me). I only read it because I occasionally want something light and formulaic, some escapist nonsense that might be fun to read. The murder mystery meant nothing to me so I was left judging it by the characters and writing and I found neither especially compelling. The book is a standard genre piece with concise and rather prosaic prose, a style of writing that does not challenge or elevate, and characters that are purely there in service of pushing the plot along. This one just didn't pull me in (or more precisely didn't keep me pulled in) and I wasn't remotely invested (beyond my enjoyment of de Cola at the start and his ideas regarding blood transfusion). It's fine. Just not for me. 6/10

Akenfield (1969) Ronald Blythe I picked this up thinking it was a novel (the front cover suggests a quaint story of sleepy English village life). Instead, I found a work of non-fiction albeit with elements of fiction in some aspects of the presentation. In many ways, it's like a documentary but in book form. Ronald Blythe essentially interviewed Suffolk farming folk in the mid to late sixties and wrote down what they said. For all I know, he may have simply recorded them and transcribed that they said word for word; but as I say, there is a definite feeling of creative license being employed here (Akenfied itself is a fictitious place and there is drama based on the book which further embellished the piece). I'm not sure what the objective was here for Blythe, to simply record the voices and experiences of a people who were quite noticeably dying out as modernity continued to march on. Maybe nothing more than that. Anyway, we get some facts and statistics along the way, dates, events, historical changes, then we get the thoughts of individual villagers and the various farm workers, people who have jobs that no longer exist (thatcher, bell ringer, malting worker, farrier, wheelwright, saddler, gravedigger etc). Plus a great many people who were directly or indirectly affected by the two world wars (and a few eccentrics thrown in for good measure too). This is a book which records not only a time and a place that is gone but also a place even further back in time which only the very elderly residents can now recall. Blythe seems to recognise that we are losing something, a way of life, a variety of traditions, and before it dies off entirely it ought to be captured, remembered, discussed, before all tangible traces of it (the people) have long vanished. As such the book always feels very sad, romantic, with a theme of hardship and melancholy running through it. England, (Western civilisation itself) has left behind a way of life that has existed for centuries and is being forgotten too easily. Each of the characters give their insights and opinions, some fascinating, some parochial, but it's all in service of a desperately pitiable past, both romanticised or despised, which is leaving us. I found it hard not to sympathise with the general sense of sorrow which comes from the speakers. One of the prominent themes, of course, is religion. Gregory Gladwell 44 blacksmith I have a tendency to be like Charles Bradlaugh, who was a Suffolk man. I am not an atheist but I have strong views about politics and the Church. Bradlaugh wasn't against Church, he was against the set-up. I'm against the set-up. But I think it was an extremely good thing that religion should be accepted as the saviour pf civilisation. So I think it right that it should be carried on, If you forsake religion, it's back to the savages. This is what is happening now. Meanwhile there is a great deal of debate about marriage and children, the need to rush into such matters less urgent than it was in the old days, the responsibilities of so many children a daunting prospect for the young of the day (there is some brief mention of the transformative development of the contraceptive pill but this issue is mostly viewed from an angle of cultural change). Terry Lloyd 21 pig farmer The village girls like to get married very young but the boys don't. Many of the boys don't want to marry until they are about thirty, although plenty of them have to long before then. I have a friend whose girl made all the running before they were wed, now he has to beg for it. Similarly, the book doesn't shy away from the less pleasant aspects of the past either. One of the most fascinating chapters comes towards the end of the book and concerns the law and its relationship with the villagers and farm workers. Here we discover various disturbing stories including one of a group of boys who have been molested by a man with some degree of learning difficulties and they need to get one of the boys to admit to what happened in order to convict him. Despite his reticence (due to the shameful nature of it), they eventually convince him to speak. But it's all rather parochial and tolerated -- as though this is just what life consists of and we should address it accordingly. In this casual vein, we get a rather chilling account from the woman tasked with dealing with the legalities of the people's relationships and how best to deal with them when it comes to children. Mrs Annersley 55 magistrate There was more incest in the past and it was always fathers and daughters, never brothers and sisters. It happened when mother had too many children, or when mother was ill, or when mother was dead. And very often it didn't matter a bit. The daughter usually proved to be very fond of the father and there would be no sign of upset in the family. No, I think it was quite an understood thing that a daughter would take on the father when the mother was ill or dead. Yikes! You will often hear conservatives tell you that we had better morals in the past because of religion but I'm not sure that argument is very convincing when more closely scrutinised. Today things look bad but that's probably because we're actively looking for unacceptable behaviours in a way that wasn't previously done. That being said, I sympathise with the general themes of the book, the lament of a simpler time when life had more certainty, greater boundaries, and a general sense of purpose. It would be silly to ignore the bad aspects of the past entirely but nonetheless I believe we have indeed lost something of value, a greater communal environment certainly, a world that is confined and limited (often for our own benefit). People find it counter-intuitive to acknowledge this, to want less choice, less freedom, less opportunity, but the truth is such things can often provide a greater degree of stability and significantly higher opportunities for contentment. The whole book is a fascinating look at a time that (even when the book was published) was fading away. We now have another additional 60 years to add on to that ever increasing distance. These people are far away from us now, almost caricatures and myths, and I think it's worth occasionally thinking of them with some degree of respect and nostalgia. It's worth remembering the world we had, what we have gained and lost. Reading some of the interviews is enlightening to say the least. Some are more interesting than others and the book certainly doesn't possess any kind of plot or chronological progress. I would not describe it as a page turner but it's certainly a unique perspective into the past and definitely worth a look. An eye opening document of a world that is long gone yet still disturbingly within reach. 7/10

Eyes

The Edges (2025) Angelo Tijssens This was strangely romantic, sad, and sorrowful all at the same time. It's also short and sweet. You're in and then you're out. A man returns to his seaside town to deal with the aftermath of his mother's recent death. He uses this opportunity to reconnect with an old boyfriend and they agree to meet at the boyfriend's house and spend some time together. There's a storm outside and the men very quickly reminisce and re-ignite old feelings, sit by the fire, and change from their wet clothes to dry clothes. From this point on, the chapters switch between their evening together and the narrator's childhood memories of his abusive and neglectful mother. The book is very easy to read and very slight. In fact, it's almost ethereal, wistful, the writing almost feeling like it's floating in and out of your consciousness on a faint breeze. I found it rather lovely and compelling. But there's not much more to the book. The whole thing goes by very softly, almost whimsically and dreamlike, yet always retaining a bitter taste in the memories of his confused childhood and his mother's behaviour. He also explores his nascent sexual encounters in youth (many of which have an element of abuse and coercion to them) as well as the relationship he had with the man he's visiting (more tender and respectful). These flights of fancy are full of nostalgia and deep feeling, and there's always a sense of past trauma defining aspects of his modern life. He wants desperately to connect to this past lover but can't seem to, their comfort with one another also possessing a divide. All the while the book conjures up a solitude in its atmospheric scene, the narrative always beautifully windswept and coastal, full of endless rain, the gentle tapping of it against the windows, and his lover's dog sleeping by the fire as they discuss the past. It was enormously effective and manifested a slow Sunday feeling as I read it, the small town, the sea, the-middle-of-nowhere quality, the northern European landscape. It was very real, tangible, evocative, even sensual. The ending provided yet another reminder that modernity and Western civilisation is becoming increasingly isolated and lonely. We sure done screwed things up on that score. Ultimately, this is a short novel about loneliness and heartache. About regret and sorrow. It takes five minutes to read but is very charming and human. I would definitely recommend it as a pleasant form of escape. The writing has stream-of-consciousness aspects but it's so light and dreamy that you don't notice. Despite being very slight and delicate, I enjoyed it a lot. 8/10

The Glamour (1984) Christopher Priest This book has slightly melted my brain and left me wondering who I am. No seriously, I'm looking into a mirror wondering... who is that? I came across this book whilst looking at a YouTube Video talking about The Magus by John Fowles (apparently Priest was so impressed by that book he gave up writing for a while). Eventually, he went back to writing and dedicated himself to trying to create something in the same philosophical vein. And he really did achieve it (I will definitely be seeking out more of his work after this). The book begins with a man named Richard Grey, a freelance cameraman, who is in hospital in Devon recovering from a car bomb (implied to be the IRA) which has killed several and injured many (Richard perhaps the most lucky of these survivors). He is undergoing physiotherapy and has regular meetings with two doctors regarding both his physical health but, more importantly, the amnesia which he is experiencing. Richard has lost any recollection of the few weeks, maybe a couple of months, of his life just prior to the bomb. Then, at the request of the tabloid newspaper that is paying for Richard's story, a woman named Sue visits him. He has no idea who she is but it is implied that they were lovers during this lost period. After spending some time with her, and, more specifically, after undergoing hypnotherapy with doctor Hurdis and his assistant (a disturbing yet important piece of the book), Richard feels as though he is regaining some snapshots of his lost life. The book then switches to his first person narration as he pieces together their first meeting in France. He and Sue met on the train and began to spend time together though she had a boyfriend that she' was going to see in the south of France named Niall who was abusive and controlling. She can't break it off with him but nonetheless agrees to meet up with Richard again later. Back in the present day (and back to third person narration), Richard and Sue begin seeing each other again. On a visit to his flat they are talking and he tells her that some of his memories have been coming back. He tells her, for instance, about remembering how they met in France on the train, the ordeal with Niall, making love in the hotel. At this point, Sue looks at him in confusion and says:... 'I have never been to France.' Not long after this, we finally get an explanation of what 'The Glamour' is. This is where the book really ramps things up and, to be honest, I'm not sure it's possible to explain anything more without spoiling the book. Suffice it to say, things get very weird and we finally get Sue's version of events (back to first person narration) of how she and Niall first met Richard in a pub in London. The less you know, the more you will enjoy this book and I would definitely recommend going in cold to truly get the most from it. So that's all I can really say without giving away too much. But I would just like to add that this book, unquestionably, contains the most hmmmed up and mind-bending sex scene I've ever come across in literature. Just utterly bizarre, hmmmed up, and yet mesmerising! This whole thing is a magnificent piece of work. I couldn't believe how well-paced it was. You get third person narration which is gripping. Then it switches to first person and we get a new perspective, new information. Then back to third. Then Sue's first person perspective. All wonderfully unreliable. And all the while Priest writes in a manner that is so beautifully smooth and wonderful to read, the book combining an intriguing story with immensely enticing prose. It's never challenging but effective in moving things along and pulling the reader in all manner of directions, all of which demand answers without ever making them feel too immediate. Priest knows how to tease the audience just enough. And at the end, there are so many instances where the strange little things he included suddenly start to make sense. I absolutely LOVE philosophical books about how we define reality, ourselves, memory, existence, and this book truly lives up to that. It bewilders and bamboozles, plays with the reader, and opens so many doors that will leave you wondering what the hell just happened. It is so cleverly done. Even how we define fiction itself is being toyed with here. And the ending, like all great fiction, allows you to ponder the implications. There are no answers, only more questions. All interpretations are valid (I have my own). If you want the book to be a straight-forward sci-fi story then it can be but that removes a lot of its power if you ask me. If you don't and prefer to see it as an existential novel (and I do), it works even better. I spent the whole book wondering, anticipating, how ambiguous Priest would allow the ending to be, and pleasingly he leaves the door wide open for all these outcomes to be available. I am very much of the opinion that this is an existential novel which entirely takes place in the real world. There is no sci-fi here, no magic. But that's just me. The truth, however, is that I can never know for sure. That's it's beauty. It's a masterpiece! 10/10

The Piano Teacher (1983) Elfriede Jelinek Sooner or later, most men (who date for long enough) will encounter women who want very rough sex. They'll want you to smack them, choke them, and often humiliate them. As a man, you'll find this all very odd and wonder what motivated such a desire but will, ultimately, not care that much. After all, you're getting sex and that's your priority. Sure, it will cross your mind that she has some kind of mental health issue, a childhood trauma, maybe even a severely damaged personality. But (certainly in the modern age) you'll eventually come to the conclusion that it's none of your business. We've been told not to kink shame after all (especially not to kink shame women), told that women are, in fact, enormously empowered and know precisely what they want. I first met one of these women in my thirties and being a good postmodern boy of left-leaning opinion, I never bothered to pursue why she wanted to be treated this way (though a few conversations with her definitely lead me to conclude that it was probably connected to her father). Anyway... the point is I didn't care. Whatever complex psychological turmoil and inner journey you are on, we are not intimate enough for me to take that into account. There's your problem. Erika Kohut (The Piano Teacher), is not of this variety, however; she is VERY overtly this way inclined because of the relationship she has with her overbearing mother. Jelinek makes no bones about this, and the book opens with, and continues to the halfway point, focusing on this co-dependent relationship. Since childhood, Erika's mother has controlled her entire existence and after her father was shipped off to the lunatic asylum, this dominance only exacerbates. Erika was destined to be a great pianist and the pressure of this expectation has taken its toll not only on her talent but also on her personality. She is now reduced to being a teacher, already in her late thirties, the promise of greatness realistically gone but still cherished by her mother so that it can never quite die. As such Erika has become a malformed woman, a disastrous and abnormal soul incapable of developing as a person ought to. She has no meaningful life, no friends, and has acquired a taste for voyeurism in the shape of peep shows and porn. She also deliberately takes large instruments on public transport with her so that she can bump into people without them getting too upset. She stands on their feet so they can blame other people. She's a mess. Then comes the sexual relationship with one of her younger students, Walter Klemmer, and here she finds an opportunity for release. But again, it's a malformed release and not really an expression of love of sexual desire. After their initial sexual encounter (in a toilet like all good first sexual encounters should be) she writes letters to him giving him instructions to beat her, abuse her, and generally humiliate her. At first glance, this is a straight-forward expression of her pent-up sexual need but as I said at the beginning, this doesn't really cover it. What Erika really wants is control but she makes the mistake of trying to attain that control by telling him to be physically violent towards her (therefore implying that he is actually the one in control). This isn't really about sex for Erika, but rather a deformed search for love and connection that she doesn't fully know how to grasp. She isn't one of those women I mentioned at the start who take a genuine sexual pleasure from masochism but instead she feels no sexual pleasure at all. She barely feels anything. In this regard, I don't think the book is that interesting because it spoon feeds her obvious psychological trauma to you. There is very little grey area here, Erika is simply seeking answers, meaning, human experiences, control, but doesn't know how. Even as she watches people having sex, her bodily response is not arousal but a need to urinate. Truth be told, she doesn't really understand sex. The relationship with Klemmer, therefore, is her only means of control but it backfires (quite understandably) because she inadvertently opened a door to an entirely different experience. The book and its characters are interesting. But ultimately, I did not enjoy the book. For me, it was the writing. Jelinek employs a strange third person narration which is far too cold and aloof. A book like this, with such a tormented protagonist, would be far more interesting (and insightful) with a first person narration. I would love to have known what Erika was actually thinking. But we get this flat, rather dull third person instead. Plus the narration itself is just so detached, almost like a robot or a visiting alien is describing the odd behaviours of humans with very metallic and autistic language. I found it almost unbearable to read in truth. It was dense and thick and always remote. This is tricky to pull off without the relief of some highly exquisite prose which Jelinek (and perhaps the translator) don't really have access to. It was so heavy and dull to me, to such an extent that great portions of it were very boring, spoiling what is an otherwise fascinating character study. Worth a read but not a book I can honestly say I enjoyed. 5/10

The Panopticon (2012) Jenni Fagan The story of a young 15-year-old girl called Anais. The book opens with her being taken by the police to a care home called The Panopticon after engaging in a potentially violent act that has resulted in a policewoman being put into a coma. She meets the other residents and staff and what follows is a rather straight-forward YA novel about an angry teen girl who is coming to terms with her circumstances whilst waiting to see if the policewoman recovers and if there's any evidence to convict her. A brief google of Fagan would suggest that this is very strongly autobiographical. I mean, it was fine. I can't say I enjoyed it that much and there were large periods where it felt like something very specifically aimed at teenagers. It just didn't have any meaningful substance to it, any progression, and was very dialogue heavy and prone to drag and repeat itself. The major problem for me was that Anais is just angry all the way through, an angst-ridden girl who is always on the defensive, always with her guard up, always swearing and unwilling to trust anyone. It makes sense given the context of her life but it isn't necessarily fun to read. There's no growth to her character, no sense that she's developing as a human, it's just relentless moodiness and sulking. This is fine for a while but eventually you get bored of it. The book might have been better off had it been narrated by Anais from a later date, as an adult, when she had a more mature outlook. Or if the book covered a larger period of her life. But instead, it's just teensy angst and cocky belligerence to the end. Then we come to a little bugbear of mine. Why are Scottish writers under the impression that they're the only people on earth who possess an accent? No, seriously. Why? There are countless places in England alone where people have a very strong (certainly much stronger than Scottish), almost indecipherable accent, but they rarely fetishise these in literature the way the Scottish do. It's not that bad here, the occasional 'disnae, umnay, arnay, radge,' etc but I just tire of this bizarre, almost nationalistic notion that dialect is somehow unique to them. Give it a hmmming rest! This is clearly designed for the benefit of the English and American reading audience (after all, why would Scottish people even need to read their own accent? Do people actually hear their own accents? No, which is precisely why you know it's performative, deliberately heightened or exaggerated for purely self-indulgent reasons). Anyway, it's a small gripe I've always had but it irritates me. Otherwise, the book is fine. It's mostly an easy to read little story. Give it to your angry teen daughter or something. But I wasn't exactly enamoured and I doubt I'll think about the book much beyond this review. 6/10

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) Thomas Pynchon Imagine taking lots of LSD and waking up in an episode of the Monkees. Then imagine how banal this is. A woman named Oedipa (everyone has a wacky name) is informed that she is the executor of the estate of a past lover (Pierce Invararity... see, wacky) and so she travels to L.A and meets a lawyer called Metzger (a former child star) and they watch a movie that happens to be on TV which starred the young Metzger. Then they have sex. I don't know why. She's married but hey, it's the sixties. Oh, and there's a band called The Paranoids who constantly turn up (hey, hey, we're the Paranoids, and people say we Paranoid around). Have I mentioned that it's the sixties? You'd never guess from reading this book that it's the sixties. Wanna smoke some dope and take some LSD and watch a documentary about Timothy Leary? Sadly, after a while, I completely lost interest in all of this cartoonish nonsense. I was suddenly reminded of A Confederacy of Dunces and had that awful feeling that I was supposed to find this book immensely funny (certainly funnier than it actually is). To be fair, I enjoyed the first two chapters and thought the writing was inventive and fluid. But the story is just so dull and gradually becomes more (deliberately) obscure and incoherent. We start to delve into secret societies and perpetual motion devices and insane, screeching therapists. None of this was entertaining to me. It was just zany, psychedelic paranoia... of a very 1960s brand. You'd be better off just listening to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds. Or sniffing glue and staring at a picture of Mickey Dolenz. All the way through, you get the impression that Pynchon himself is deliriously paranoid and drowning in the (heavily dated, my groovy cat) conspiracy theories of the day. Some of this is interesting, the investigation of whether your life is in you hands or influenced, even controlled, by outside forces, this particular anxiety ridden notion very much present in the idea of the secret mail service that works in opposition to the actual mail service. But honestly, no philosophical debate can be adequately explored in such a disposable form of art. Not for me, anyway. And the biggest issue I had, as always, is that it just isn't very fun to read (the story more so than the prose). There's something interesting at the heart of the piece but it feels exaggerated, malformed, and extremely dated. I can imagine hippies and counter culture liberals loving this (oh God, is that why Pynchon is such a hipster's wet dream?). But I found most of it overwrought and contrived, almost like an inadvertent parody of postmodern literature. It's just not that good, kids. I don't care how groovy this cat is. It's well-written gibberish, like that acid infused episode of the Monkees. Reading this has convinced me to put Gravity's Rainbow on the back burner indefinitely. I don't care how groovy you dig on this guy, I ain't no square and this just ain't outta sight. 4/10

The Gorse Trilogy (1952/53/55) Patrick Hamilton I've always been a big fan of Patrick Hamilton's work and have enjoyed all of his books. Sadly, this one (actually three novels squeezed into one) was a bit of a letdown. Similar to 20,00 Streets Under The Sky, the three novels have been turned into one because they focus on the same characters. In this instance, just one character, the rather marvellous Ralph Ernest Gorse. He is a cad and a bounder, almost certainly a high functioning psychopath, and the three novels follow his nefarious exploits. The biggest problem with the novels is that they're essentially the same story told three times. Gorse meets a woman, manipulates and seduces her, then swindles her life savings. The West Pier (1952) This is by far the best of the three. This one actually feels more like a novel and provides early chapters about his childhood, his school days, and his early forays into criminality. The book eventually jumps ahead to when Gorse is a young man of 18 and living in Brighton. Here, with two of his friends (Ryan and Bell), they meet Esther and Gertrude. Esther is beautiful and likes Ryan and vice versa. But Gorse is more confident, asking her out while Ryan falters, and she is prone (one of the themes of the book) to be impressed by Gorse being upper middle-class and educated. She is even more impressed by his sexually secure nature, his indifference, his apparent sophistication. And yet she finds Ryan more physically attractive. She begins to date both these young men before Gorse manipulates her into viewing Ryan as a threat. It's a rather lightweight story but does a good job of setting up the character of Gorse. Otherwise, it's a little meandering and quaint, never really going anywhere that interesting (we already know that Gorse is a con-man and is going to fleece her). Hamilton clearly has a certain venom for beautiful girls who place great importance in men who exhibit higher class, status, education. The book is very dated in that sense, everyone obsessed with their rank in the social order. Esther allows herself to be seduced by a man who is less attractive to her than Ryan purely because he combines high status with self-assurance. Had this book been written today, it would probably focus on women and their noted attraction to the bad-boy. Gorse has just enough danger about him to make him more intriguing than Ryan. And she comes across as ultimately naive and even a little complicit in her own downfall. The book is very readable and by far the best of these three. There is an exuberance in the characters, a youthful excitement that permeates, even from the cold and aloof Gorse who openly acknowledges that he's new to the game of confidence trickery. We're essentially seeing him learn his trade. I was enjoying reading this but was a little disappointed by the damp squib ending. It all felt a little inconsequential. Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953) Literally more of the same here. Gorse is now a little older and residing in Reading. He takes on the character of a first world war veteran and focuses his attention on an older woman named Mrs Plumleigh-Bruce. She also has the attention of a man named Stimpson (hence the title) but he is, it seemed to me, somewhat insignificant to events. And so yeah, we get more of the same. This time it's a betting swindle (rather than a car in the first book) and it goes along almost identically, with all the same beats, and all the same outcomes. I really didn't get much from this. Unknown Assailant (1955) Then finally a much shorter novel (a third of the other two) which has yet another identical set-up. Gorse is now over thirty and seduces a barmaid called Ivy. Very much the same story as before though this time Gorse passes himself off as nobility and goes by the name The Honourable Gerald Claridge. I was really struggling with this one and found it quite dull. There is a slight opportunity to touch on Gorse's sexuality (he likes to tie women up) which also had a brief mention in the first book where he does this to a little girl. But it never really goes anywhere and Hamilton only allows himself to hint and nudge. So we basically just get more of the same here. I love Hamilton's writing but these final novels didn't quite live up to what had gone before. The West Pier is the best of the three and worth reading but the others can be skipped (unless you want the full character study). Some of his writing (especially in The West Pier) is lovely, very smooth and accomplished, but there are times when it feels like he could have removed so much. For example, in The West Pier there's a whole section where Ryan gets stood up by Esther so Gertrude arrives to tell him and they spend an evening playing arcade games. This adds almost nothing and despite being fun to read, by the end of the book, you do wonder why he wasted time on this, and many other intricate niceties. I suppose it helps to build the world but It's all for the sake of a rather basic story. Anyway, I enjoyed the first book (a little) but found the second two less interesting. Hamilton's writing is always good but the content is ultimately very slight in my opinion. Never mind. 7/10

In Love (1953) Alfred Hayes A nameless middle-aged man meets a woman in a bar and proceeds to tell her about a doomed love affair he once experienced. The first and last chapter takes place in this bar while the rest of the book is his story. The woman he fell in love with was a young divorcee with a child and while things were going well for a while, she later meets a rich bloke called Howard who offers her money and so things take a turn. After that, it becomes a more adversarial relationship, the power dynamics and transactional nature of love an obvious theme in the book. People are often looking for different things and will manipulate the other in order to get them. This aspect aside, the book is an otherwise very basic story and I would argue the majority of your enjoyment will come from the writing style which Hayes has to offer. Some of it is quite beautiful, a kind of wispish romanticism that was common to the era (or a nostalgic version of this). I also got some flashbacks to the Great Gatsby, a sense of being out of time, lost in jazz music and the rise of burgeoning modernity. Some of the sentences whirl along, slither like snakes that never end, and Hayes clearly has a penchant for the decorous and poetic. It's a nice little novella, a little on the lightweight side (too much to be truly great), but it's very well-written. I wish I could say I loved it more than I actually did but the truth is, I was always slightly uninterested in the actual story. If I ever read this again, however, I would almost certainly ignore the story and focus my attention on the writing which is occasionally fluid and lyrical, and something that reaches genuine heights of sumptuous, liquid prose. My first reading is usually focused on the plot and characters, neither of which especially grabbed me here, so I only mildly enjoyed it. But the second reading, whenever I get around to it, ought to be a far more rewarding experience. A nice little gem that's definitely worth your time. 7/10

The Waiting Years (1957) Fumiko Enchi So the book begins with Tomo being sent by her husband, Yukitomo, to go find a nice young concubine that can be brought home to live with them. With the help of an old friend, Tomo finds a fifteen-year-old girl called Suga who becomes part of the family. He regularly has ex with Suga (despite the fact that she has not yet begun to menstruate (this will come back later as an explanation for her inability to have children) and Tomo is somewhat sidelined (and growing ever resentful). Meanwhile, another concubine called Yumi is brought into the fold and Tomo has further resentments to deal with. As the years go by the women come to terms with their roles and Tomo even tries to find husbands for them so that they can leave the family. It's all very Japanese (at least late 19th century Japanese). Then comes the part of the book that really takes Yukitomo to new levels of acceptable behaviour. His young (and seemingly low intelligence) son, Michimasa meets and marries a young woman named Miya and, sure enough, Yukitomo begins an affair with her too. Eve Tomo finds this behaviour to be crossing a line. More years go by, the young women Suga and Yumi are now in her forties, and Tomo has grown immensely bitter regarding her husband. You can hardly blame her. I'm not entirely sure what this book is about. Japanese culture? Men being pigs? Dunno. But I've seen some reviews describe the book's title as something that refers to Tomo waiting for death so that she can be released from the humiliating life her husband has inflicted on her. The waiting years, those years when, in that time in Japan, women had little recourse to do anything other than what they were told. Her only escape is death and therefore life is, essentially, nothing more than a waiting room, a thing you have to endure before being released. Sounds about right to me. An intriguing book to say the least, one which explores an interesting world and characters. But I can't say I enjoyed the writing that much. Like a lot of Japanese literature it was very matter of fact, very succinct, and to the point. Not always fun to read. But a book worth reading nonetheless (if you can stomach the patriarch). 6/10