Hux Book Blog 2025 (Spoilers)

[Hux]

Review posted January 2 - 1982 Janine (Alasdair Gray) 7/10

Review posted January 3 - Camera (Jean-Phillippe Toussaint) 5/10

Review posted January 6 - Brian (Jeremy Cooper) 9/10

Review posted January 10 - The Obscene Bird of Night (Jose Donoso) 3/10

Review posted January 13 - Far North (Marcel Theroux) 4/10

Edited 9 hours ago by Hux

[Hux]

1982 Janine (1984) Alasdair Gray

 

A man named Jock McLeish is alone in a hotel room ruminating on his life. He is suicidal, contemplating his past, his lovers, his wife, his parents, his failures. Sometimes he fantasises about a variety of women (Janine being one of them), and he tells stories about these women and their sexual adventures in between telling stories of his actual life. The first third of this book was just magnificent, so unique and inventive, so clever and entertaining. Gray brilliantly interweaves reality and fantasy making the reading experience a joy, the narrative vibrant and alive, full of intrigue and originality. He manages to make you want to know more about both his real life experiences and, very successfully, his made-up stories too -- you are enthralled by both and the switch from one to the other makes the book an absolute joy to read. There's a story, for example, about one of his fictional women (named Superb) where she is cheating on her husband and going to meet a man. She is stopped by the police and taken to the station in a surreal arrest that combines sexual fantasy with comical farce. But then Jock returns to his real life story for a while and we take a break from that narrative. Then he goes back to it but this time instead of being stopped by the police, she meets her lover and we get an entirely new, improvised story that goes in a completely different direction than it did before The whole thing works effectively to make the piece always feel fresh and interesting. You get sucked into his life and his fantasies. Like I said, the first third is just fantastic. 

 

But then, sadly, as the book goes along, it starts to outstay its welcome. The very premise of the book is somewhat abandoned. The deeper you get, the less frequent these fantastical stories become and by the halfway point, Gray has essentially focused most of his attention on Jock's parents, his work life, his ex-wife, his first girlfriend, Denny, and the countless other aspects of his real life. I kept getting bored and waiting for Janine to return, or Superb, or any of the other fictional creations he might conjure but their presence becomes increasingly sparse and the book starts to drag. Eventually, it even begins to feel a little self-indulgent as Jock (or is it Gray?) continue to tell you rather banal things from his own life which are very rarely interesting. A lot of writers seem to fall into this trap; they become a little solipsistic and self-serving, failing to realise that what they're saying is only interesting to them. Sure, a story about THAT man going to the shop for some milk isn't very interesting but a story about me - a great writer who can make his life fascinating with sublime prose - going to the shop for some milk would be mesmerising! Gray gets sidetracked by the real life elements of Jock McLeish, and the memory of Janine and Superb gradually begins to fade. I wanted more of them both (or even the less developed Big Momma character). I wanted Gray to follow through with the idea more fully and break the narrative up with these entertaining interludes, these flights of sexual fancy, but he chooses instead to focus more on Jock's real life which, in truth, isn't that interesting at all. His time working as a security installation man, his failed marriage, or an especially dull part of the book where he is working in the theatre (I think... I was tuning out by this point) all slow things down to a standstill. 

 

I wish Gray had stuck with the premise. It was fun and original, had a unique perspective, almost surreal and magical (momentarily very reminiscent of Andrew Sinclair's wildly unique book 'Gog'). But the book loses momentum as it goes along and gets a little bogged down in the mundane qualities of Jock which left me a little bored. Why start with such explosive concepts if you intend to defuse them? By the halfway point Janine is an afterthought, a dissipating character with little involvement in his fantasies or his mind. In fact, Superb probably gets more attention as the most prominent of his fictional creations. But she too is gradually left by the wayside in favour of the real women in his life. 

 

The book had the potential to be amazing. But it loses its way. Gray is patently a writer I need to learn more about and hopefully his inventive style and voice will resonate with me more in his other works. I'll probably read Lanark at some point but avoid Poor Things until after the film stuff has died down. The man is clearly a great writer and worth investigating. This book had me for a while (really HAD ME) but then, unfortunately, it lost me. Nonetheless, this is still very highly recommended. Unique and different in a world that is often tediously predictable. 

 

7/10 

 

Edited January 2 by Hux

[Hux]

Camera (1989) Jean-Phillippe Toussaint

 

Here's a crazy idea: how about a novel about the trivial banalities of living, the day-to-day mediocrity and smallness of things. After all, what could be more existential than a novel about the very boring and mundane, the dull and ordinary?

On paper, this ought to have appealed to me. And I did enjoy a lot of the book (I especially liked Toussaint's writing when he allowed his prose to flow), but after a while, you need something... anything... to give the piece a little more meat on its bones. But the tone remains the same throughout. The narrator tells us about meeting a woman at the drivers ed office, then he tells us about going to get groceries. Then he tells us about the car breaking down, needing some propane, trying to find the Metro, what the weather is like. Then he and Pascale (the woman) go to London for a trip and eat in a restaurant, and look at things, and say things, and do things. It's all very minimalist, the insignificant aspects of life we all endure, with no discernible plot and no desire to waste any time introducing one. It's just an average man, living an average life. And THAT'S where we acquire the existential qualities of this novel. Because what could be more existential than merely existing?

It's a nice idea and the book has a gentle feel (some may even be tempted to describe it as charming). It reminded me of a few things. Autumn Rounds, The Sundays of Jean Desert. But those books had different qualities when it came to the existential themes (the latter in particular being more thought provoking in my opinion). This book is, at face value, a very quiet novella about a man meeting a woman and doing dull, normal things. That's it... that's your lot! While that does indeed cover the basics in regards to a reflective novel exploring existential ideas, it ultimately was a little too lightweight for my liking. There were periods where the writing was really fluid and crisp, and I would have liked more of that, but the book is too busy offering tedious aspects of an average life, the classic humdrum of western existence, that it doesn't get to dwell too long on those beautiful sentences very often. Which is a shame because that's the book's best feature.

Fundamentally, I don't think I will ponder this one for very long. Short and sweet. Easy to read. An odd little book to be sure. But ultimately underwhelming. 

 

5/10

[Hux]

Brian (2023) Jeremy Cooper

 

I've always had a soft spot for a particular genre of book and that genre is... 'oddball men with poor social skills who fixate on a thing whilst allowing their lives to pass them by.' It's a very specific genre and yet one which, more often than you'd think, comes along quite frequently. And thank goodness because they always speak to me in some way. And so here is another entry, this time about a bloke called Brian.

And I loved it. The writing really appealed to me, was so easy to read, and insightful, and the subject matter was extremely engaging.

The book begins by sparing us the banal details of his youth and early adult life; instead we jump straight into his life when Brian is in his late thirties. Because this is the point in his life when he begins to take an interest in films (especially arty, foreign language films), an interest that will gradually become an obsession. He visits the BFI every day after working another dull day in his office job which only briefly gets fleshed out. He has colleagues but only casually knows (or cares about) them. His family are non-existent; and he has, despite being open to the possibility of either gender, no sex life to speak of. It isn't explicitly declared but there does seem to be a potential for Brian to be autistic (cliched yes, but often accurate). And so he works, reads, travels by bus, eats at the same restaurant, watches the football, and consumes new films each day at the BFI. Understandably, there are other oddballs like him, equally nerdy and obsessive, who also regularly watch films at the BFI, and he comes to know most of them, even regarding them as (albeit distant) friends. Jack (a connoisseur of film scores) in particular becomes a confidante.

Brian develops a specialist interest in Japanese cinema whereby he becomes the groups resident expert. As the book goes along, and Brian ages, into his fifties, sixties, seventies, you're essentially given a catalogue of views and opinions regarding works by all manner of disparate filmmakers (all excellently done). There is something appealing in the way Cooper mirrors Brian's intricate and obsessive knowledge by offering these film (and actor) criticisms throughout the book. In fact, it's hard not to conclude that this is precisely what the book is about -- male isolation and the fetishisation of things. None of the film buffs are women of course. Why would they be? This kind of solipsistic love of stuff seems to be a uniquely male experience. There are subtle hints to this at various points in the book:
 

"He had joined a book – reading club, mostly of women, jolly, middle-aged, who ridiculed his proposals of novels to read, listened in silence to his halting comments on the book-of-the–month and moved promptly on the topics of their own concerns."

It's also hard not to conclude that Cooper is celebrating this male world of fixation, especially if it possesses some degree of artistic merit. I tend to disagree here and consider Brian's love of film as inconsequential as anything else. Brian has wasted his life. But then... who doesn't? Even as he ages and begins to develop physical ailments (including poor eyesight), he takes refuge in his life choices which, from an outsider's perspective, can seem rather trivial. But the best existential novels always leave you wondering why. What was the point? Did any of it matter?

There seems to be a spate of novels these days (presumably due to women's dominance of publishing) that focus on female oddballs. But these books always focus on feelings, attitudes, and mental health. In such times, we are reliably told that men should deal with their mental health more like women, by talking and exploring emotions, and looking inward. But I think this is awful advice. Men need to do things, fix things, obsess over things -- books, football, sex, war, anything. If you know a man who is depressed, don't ask him to talk about it. Ask him to fix the fence in your back garden. Things are important. Things matter. Fences always need fixing. Men understand things.

Brian's life is unquestionably a pointless waste of time. But it's his life to waste (and he does so in an appropriate way to him). And the bottom line is... I like oddballs who waste their lives (without all that mental health narcissism and blubbering).

Brian is more discerning, and definitely worth getting to know.

 

9/10

 

Edited January 6 by Hux

[Hux]

The Obscene Bird of Night (1970) Jose Donoso

Where to begin? I suppose with the fact that it's extremely difficult to enjoy a book when there's nothing to latch onto, nothing solid that you can grab, with both hands, and ingest in a way that makes the thing come alive. It's like trying to grab hold of a piece of air. I think there was only one chapter (towards the beginning) where I did get a momentary glimpse of sanity and could actually cling to something tangible but this vanished almost immediately. The structure is chaotic from start to finish and any logic or coherency you might find is either accidental or located in madness. 

As far as the story is concerned the only meaningful narrative I could find (and I'm still not entirely certain about this) revolved around a man called Mudito (who occasionally has other names and other physical forms) who lives in a weird little enclosed square of witches and orphans and these witches are either controlling him (or vice versa) and he is their child or creation (or vice versa) and he is potentially a monster (an imbunche in Chilean culture) or at least turning into one, and there's a girl called Iris who gets pregnant and he is both the father and the child but also... he isn't. And there are other characters who come and go (but I really didn't know who they were) and then there's a guy called Humberto (but he's also Mudito). Then there's Jeronimo who has a deformed son and wants him to be raised in this same place of misfits so that his son feels less weird. Oh and Jeronimo and Mudito might also be the same person. So yeah... things are happening... it's a fever dream of incoherent madness and even when you momentarily know what's happening and who people are, the very next chapter morphs them into something, or someone, else until everything is a blur of static and white noise. These people seem to be trapped outside of time and exist only in the minds of the narrator (who himself only exists in someone else's mind) and nothing is ever remotely stable or fixed. Got that? Good then I shall continue...

It's all over the place. Even when the book is weirdly compelling (such as when the old lady pretends to be Iris's baby and suckles on her tits before they massage her old-lady vagina??) the book is hard to stay focused on. It's so difficult to maintain eye contact with this thing. But then, I suppose that's the point. And Donoso admits as much in moments of lucidity...
 

Old women like Peta Ponce have the power to fold time over and confuse it, they multiply and divide it, events are refracted in their gnarled hands as in the most brilliant prism, they cut the consecutive happening of things into fragments they arrange in parallel form, they bend those fragments and twist them into shapes that enable them to carry out their designs.

It's all very interesting stuff but as I said at the start, it's very difficult to enjoy any of this when you can't latch onto anything. I never had a strong sense of what was happening or who these people were. Without that, it's extremely difficult to care. Why would I invest in such a (long) book if I get so very little back?

Reading and watching some of the positive reviews of this book is eye opening; people will admit that they found it a slog, that it could have had hundreds of pages removed without losing anything, that it was impossible to follow, but then they'll finish their review by saying.. it's a masterpiece!! Do these people not know what the word masterpiece means? They sound like battered wives defending their husband's violent behaviour because he happens to be wearing a really nice suit. It's bizarre. People are so desperate for literature to matter beyond mere reading experience that they will imbue books which, by their own admission, are unpleasant to get through, as magnificent. Plus the fact that Donoso can clearly write is a factor. But so what? If I go to a urinal and see some beautifully written and profound graffiti on the wall, it doesn't change the fact that I'm surrounded by shhhhhhh and wee. That Donoso can write only makes this worse (like all those talented writers who, having read Joyce and seen how much respect he commands, choose to waste their talents on banal stream-of-consciousness drivel. Some may even tell you that it's playing with themes regarding the novel and what constitutes plot, character, etc, challenging those expectations. But again, that's like me making you eat a turd and telling you that I'm challenging the bourgeoisie expectations of what food can be. In the bin with that pretentious crap! This might be a good time to confess that I absolutely despise magical realism. I mean, I just utterly despise it. 

I remember reading Pedro Paramo and thinking... well, at least this ethereal weirdness is short. But this one is NOT short. It never ends. It's like Donoso read Sabato's On Heroes and Tombs and ignored all the reality and said, I'm gonna focus on those parts of the book where obsession spirals into an incoherent mess of nightmarish surrealism and drag it out until the reader loses their fudgeing mind. Its's a book worth investigating but one which, I assure you, can only ever disappoint (even if you like it). As such the only people I can recommend this book to are people who genuinely love magical realism (you sickos!) or hipsters (so they can impress their wife Susan and their boyfriend Steve all at once). Otherwise, for me, it's a book that I just couldn't find any love for. If I read this for a thousand years (a form of hell no doubt), I would still never enjoy it. I might understand it better. But I still wouldn't like it.

 

3/10

 

 

[Hux]

Far North (2009) Marcel Theroux 

 

Whenever I am oppressed by reading a particular book, or just drained by life in general, I often like to return to my guilty pleasure of post-apocalyptic fiction for some cosy, escapist nonsense. And for me, that's usually post-apocalyptic stories about loners surviving in some isolated wilderness (preferably with a dog). This book seemed like the perfect candidate for that kind of thing and for the first third, it was indeed exactly what I had hoped for. The book is set in the Far North (in this case Siberia) and takes place after some kind of global catastrophe that we don't get much background on (possibly nuclear war but unclear). The book opens with an ambiguous narrator who turns out to be a woman (but Theroux keeps this vague for a few chapters) who is is surviving alone in this frozen wasteland, scavenging, hunting, occasionally trading with the native Tungus people, and sometimes even having to kill them if need be. Then she meets a young Chinese boy called Ping who also (later) turns out to be a woman (women making themselves look like men is understandable during an apocalypse); and for a while their quiet lives become very stable and happy (though this period is very quickly dealt with before we move on). This first third of the book was hugely enjoyable to read and it was precisely what I had hoped it would be, hunting for food, exploring the barren landscape for food, building a home, etc. I was completely on board.

But then, after a traumatic event occurs, the protagonist (Makepeace) decides to leave to see if she can find some sign of civilisation. Eventually she does come across others but, as you might expect, it's not very pretty or what she had anticipated. This was basically the point in the story where I was quickly starting to lose interest; it all just becomes very samey and repetitive and involves a great deal of slavery, abuse, and tyrannical hierarchy. She gets locked up by a community and this is pretty much where the book stays until the very end. From this point on, the book abandons the cosy catastrophe element (what is what I most enjoy) of surviving and travelling and switches instead to a rather dull series of beatings, solitude, and abuse which slows the whole thing down. I just wasn't very invested or entertained. It all became a little boring and obvious and frankly, I just wanted it to end. The knowledge we acquire towards the end does add some colour to her background (and the reasons Ping's story affected her so much) but I was already done by then.

Ultimately, it was a tad disappointing. Theroux does a pretty good job of convincingly writing a woman but, in my opinion, he only achieves this because he keeps her personality very mannish and aloof, especially making sure to avoid any form of sexuality. Truth be told, if you want a woman surviving the apocalypse by pretending to be a man, I would recommend The Book of The Unnamed Midwife instead. This was just a bit... meh!

 

4/10