Freewheeling Andy
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Posts posted by Freewheeling Andy
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Being the greatest living Albanian author isn't exactly the kind of accolade most people would want - damning with faint praise might even be understating this. But in fact Ismael Kadare is a brilliant author, winner of the International Booker, talked of as a potential novel laureate (and not just by me).
This, his most recently translated novel, is a tale of intrigue set in the ruling elite of communist Albania. The designated succesor to The Guide (clearly Enver Hoxha, or a proxy for him) has been found dead. The question is, was he killed or was it suicide?
This novel is written in an intriguing way - the authors voice is completely detached [i wonder how much of that is a consequence of the work being translated first from Albanian to French, then to English; and how much is deliberate]. It's an interesting conceit.
We end up looking at the architect of The Successor's house, at his family, at his rivals in the Politburo, and at the coroner. All of their lives, their thoughts, are filled with political fear, concern about the nature of suspicion in a closed society.
This is a fascinating book, although probably not my favourite of Kadare's. It works as a political thriller, but not in the traditional sense of a thriller. The detached voice and strange environment probably mean it won't be for everyone, but that doesn't make it any less of a good novel.
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Ah. It was marvellous. What is real, what is dream, what is written, what is in Eiji Miyake's head? Is it SF? No. Is it cyberpunk? No, not really. I guess, like Murukami, it's cyberpunk set in normal urban Japan. But it's not Murukami, it's most definitely Mitchell, with it's multiple voices, it's playing with stories, it's fragmentation leading to a whole. I guess a more linear story than Ghostwritten or Cloud Atlas, but certainly not conventional like Black Swan Green. Ace, anyway.
Now to Dance, Dance, Dance.
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If your thing is the spectacular, adventurous, really, really pushing it, ambitious stuff, then you'd love both Ghostwritten and Number9Dream, although probably appreciate Black Swan Green less.
Anyway, I'm still buzzing after finishing Number9Dream.
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I'm not sure he knows how to write a bad sentence. Just finished Number9Dream and I'm mostly sad that I've now read all of his books so far.
It's magnificent. I think people who said it was really just rehashed Murukami are really desperately underplaying how wonderful it is (that's nothing against Murukami, by the way).
So far: 4 novels, all of them spectacularly brilliant, and properly ambitious. Best writer currently writing in English that I can think of.
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I drank a lovely, but slightly past it's best, 1982 Chateau Lagrange last night.
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It's a suet based pudding, made with loads of dried fruit and alcohol that last for ages, and you cook by steaming in a ceramic pudding bowl and then leave for months; and reheat before eating. It's lovely.
I wouldn't put any sauce on at all. Just a bit of brandy, set fire to it, then huge great dollops of double cream, and huge great dollops of brandy butter.
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OK, more seriously, if you want to cook with cured ham, look for things you'd cook with slices of pancetta, speck and parmaham in Italian cook books.
That is, if what you mean by cured ham is what I mean - dark, but more translucent and bacon-like than cooked ham is.
I had a wonderful piece of quail wrapped in crispy cured ham the other day - I think they just baked it.
Much easier is getting chicken breast, stuffing it with a home made pesto, and wrapping in thin slices of cured ham and sticking it in the oven for half an hour.
Or saltimbocca. If you can get veal escalopes, saltimbocca is great and easy (stick a couple of sage leaves inside a veal escalope, wrap in ham, hold together with a cocktail stick, fry in small amount of olive oil for 3 or 4 minutes each side, leave out warm, and make a simple picatta - shallots, chicken stock, wine, lemon juice - to pour over it in the same pan, getting the meaty flavours into the sauce).
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Give it to me?
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Kell, to me it really depends on which way round the fame works. Someone like Gordon Ramsay or Heston Blumenthal became famous for their cooking, and their fantastic restaurants, and only later went on to TV. You were paying the premium before they were on telly.
I'm not sure how true that is of, say, Jamie Oliver or Gary Rhodes or (heaven forbid) Ainsley Harriot.
I think if someone from TV opens a restaurant you'd be right to be cynical; but if someone runs a 3* restaurant and then gets recruited to TV, then it's probably fair to trust that the restaurant is pretty good whatever the chef's fame.
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Now starting on Mitchell's Number9Dream
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I finished Due Preparations For The Plague, which I really enjoyed. A genuinely interesting thriller, playing with the voices used. Incredibly dark, very big themes, very nicely written, like Hospital's other book I've read, Oyster.
The big qualms with it for me were the predicting of the known future, having a book set pre-9/11 written post 9/11, when the book covers the subjects of terror and of Iraq.
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Ah. I'm really glad you enjoyed it, Rennie. Some people I know felt it was a bit flat because it wasn't the same as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten, it wasn't so expansive and crazily ambitious. But they're wrong.
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I really enjoyed the first 80% of it. I didn't find it at all difficult to read. The end of it was, for me, remarkably unsatisfying, but other people I know completely disagree with me and love it all.
Read it, though, it's well worth your time.
I've never seen the movie, though. Nor do I intend to. But Kell, don't let Penelope Cruz's presence put you off seeing Volver.
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Added Albania and Australia
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I absolutely loved Black Swan Green, and think Mitchell's one of the best authors writing in English at the moment.
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Oh, and those quantities make way too much pasta.
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Yeah. I filled it raw. I was using a US recipe, so apoligies for the units - I used 3 cups of fine flour - which is sort of one and a half pints, and five eggs mixed together , gently mixed them together and then kneaded the whole lot for about 10 minutes. The recipe set let the "dough" rest, covered, for half an hour, which I did.
Then I just rolled it until it was thin - repeatedly turning it and keeping the surface well floured, chopped it into rectangles, put filling on one side, dabbed water around the edge to make it stickier, put the other side over and squashed the edges together.
Really that easy.
The filling was just a mozzarella ball, a couple of roasted peppers from a jar, three or four hot chillies from a jar, about 10 olives -all choped into small bits - and a couple of cloves of garlic, crushed, and a bit of salt and pepper.
Boiled them for about 4 or 5 minutes, and was a bit careful when removing them from the water because they were looking pretty fragile.
Delicious, though. I just had some leftover ones and they're still very good.
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I made pasta for the first time last night.
It tastes so much better than shop brought pasta. Very, very pleased about it. And the pasta side isn't too much like hard work, really. Just flour and eggs and a bit of salt, mixed and mixed and kneaded and kneaded and then rolled flat.
Filling the pasta, which I did with a chilli, roasted pepper, garlic, olive and mozarella stuffing, though, was a right pain, and took forever.
I think it was worthwhile, though.
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Ooh! It's ages since I read it, but yes, The Tin Men was hilarious.
It may not be to everyone's taste, but I found it hard to control my hysterics when reading Flann O'Brien's newspaper articles from the 30s and 40s that are collated in The Best Of Myles. And also At-Swim-Two-Birds by the same author, although that's slightly less "laugh out loud".
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Oooh! That sounds damned good. More than just a hill of beans. I'll add that to my slightly obscure wanted list.
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Ah. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've just finished the Successor, which I didn't really enjoy so much (although I preferred it to Spring Flowers...). He sometimes writes these great, full novels, and sometimes seems to write these fragmentary things that are almost novellas rather than novels, like The Pyramid and Spring Flowers and Successor.
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Thinking back on Yes Man, I think it actually perhaps gains by being less dramatic. In my mind I was expected wild, exciting things to happen to Danny, and it to turn out more like a novel; but perhaps the fact that most of the things are fairly low key (buy a car, get a girlfriend, reply to some e-mails, go to bars) actually make the book better, more enlightening.
I've just finished The Successor. It's definitely a step up from Spring Flowers... but is still not great. I found it frustrating because it was written in a similar allegorical style to The Pyramid, and didn't seem to be a full novel, with full plot, and seemed more constructed as little fragments, more like an idea for a book. The idea is fascinating, as a psychological whodunnit set in communist Albania, trying to work out who is responsible for the murder of the designated succesor to a character who is clearly Enver Hoxha. I guess it was a worthwhile read, but I just thought it should have been better.
I'm now properly starting on Due Preparations For The Plague by Janette Turner Hospital.
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I never read A Scanner Darkly, although friends tell me that it could be Dick's best. I've read all five anthologies of the short stories, though, which I really enjoyed. At some point they get a bit samey, but I guess that's inevitable when you're writing for the SF magazine audience. You can really see the change in style as he gets older, though, getting more personal and moving further away from the traditional SF stuff.
I think my favourite remains The Man In The High Castle, although Do Androids Dream... is also great. All of the written stuff is better than the films - I really didn't think much of Total Recall, and I've always thought Do Androids Dream is much better than Blade Runner - but that's one of those odd ones that polarises people, those who prefer the film and those who prefer the book, although they are completely different.
Certainly one of my two favourite SF authors, both of whom operate(d) on the fringes of SF. The other being JG Ballard. Although very different, they both play much more with the psychological side of things than with the "ooh, look at the cool shiny new technology" or Space Opera stuff.
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Yes Man was a fun little book. Not exactly deep, or serious, and maybe neither as profound, nor as adventurous and insane, as it might have been. But fun to read and a little enlightening none-the-less.
Man has dull life, meets man on bus telling him to say yes more, which he does. Fairly interesting things happen.
I've now started on Ismael Kadare's The Successor. I love Kadare's books, but the most recent I read - Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, didn't really strike home. Be interesting to see whether this is a continuation of the downturn.
Janette Turner Hospital - Due Preparations For The Plague
in General Fiction
Posted
This is the literary political thriller. Literary, in the sense that it's pushing the boundaries of genre fiction.
Lowell's mother died in a hijacking gone wrong in 1987. He always worries when it gets towards the anniversary. His life is a mess. Around 14th anniversary of the accident his father also dies semi-mysteriously.
This novel plays with different characters, and different methods of story telling, pushing on this tale of international epionage, of the amorality of the secret services, of psychopaths.
What seem to be a disparate and worrying collection of coincidences, enough to drive a reader insane, slowly coalesce, and you begin to realise why everything fits together.
This book is harrowing, in places. There are some pretty gruesome scenes, but they aren't redundant. They are necessary.
The setting of the book is the US East Coast in late summer 2001. It is clearly written to be a setting as a precursor to 9/11. Sometimes the nods to what happens afterwards are perhaps a little too knowing - always a risk with any novel set in the past.
I don't think this is quite as grand and glorious as Hospital's other novel I read, Oyster, but it's still pretty excellent as it plays with classical references and metaphors to keep the story going.