Hux Book Blog 2025 (Spoilers)

[Hux]

The Interim (2000) Wolfgang Hilbig

 

I was promised a novel about a drunk writer wandering the streets of Germany but instead I got a drunk writer banging on about the nightmare of of East and West Germany. Interesting but not quite what I wanted.

C (he doesn't get to have a name but it's clearly based on Wolfgang Hilbig) is living in Nuremberg. He frequents bars, brothels, and train stations. He was of some notable repute as a writer in East Germany, so much so that he was invited to the West to give talks about his books. But here, he seems to have drowned himself in alcohol and melancholy, and become lost in a quagmire of writer's block and self-pity, unable to connect to the many women he knows, specifically a woman named Hedda. Instead, it's a lot of mental wrestling about his life, his place in the word (east or west), and a great deal of reminiscing about past mistakes and events. His visa has expired and yet he doesn't want to leave. But equally he doesn't want to stay. He appears to be sincerely confused about what he's supposed to be and, more acutely, where he's supposed to be. Hence, he is at an interim in his life. 

It started okay, and I enjoyed the casual boozing and womanising (always fun), even his penile dysfunction and lamentations therein, plus his moaning about his mother. I especially enjoyed his opinions regarding not only the difference between literature in east and west but more specifically the general lack of integrity present in western literature, and its apparent descent into mediocrity (here we very much agree).
 

But over here literature was going down the drain, he felt that was obvious. Literature that refused to serve the purpose of distraction was punished by being passed over on the market...after all, on that market all stops were pulled to distract the public; the best distraction was what sold best. On an almost weekly basis the culture pages of the newspapers he read to distract himself informed him about the end of literature.

Hear hear! That being said, however, you can hardly conclude that C (or Wolfgang) are especially gifted at offering a superior alternative. Aside from the book repeating itself (east or west... east or west!!!), it also made the mistake (in my opinion) of being third person narrative. Why in the world would you write a novel about a lonely, street wandering loser and barfly with profound (and occasionally trivial) thoughts on literature and politics in third person? This book badly needed a first person narration, it needed to delve into the dark and booze-sodden thoughts of a man breaking apart, lost in an eddying spiral of hatred, regret and comical yet fascinating internal monologue. It seemed so ripe for that. But anyway...

There's some good stuff here but it all feels a little... after the lord mayor's show. Aside from the fact that the book would have benefited from a first person narration, there's also the question of distance from its setting. It was written in 2000 but is dealing with the eighties and you get the distinct impression that whatever Wolfgang is reminiscing about is slightly redundant, out of date, and essentially of minimal interest. Early 90s, fine, but the whole thing came across as a performative recollection of fantasy and personal opinion. Yet weirdly he still seems confused about his place in the world. Ultimately, I wanted more darkness and decay, the poetic madness of an artistic soul battling his demons with a bottle of vodka in his hand, but instead I got something that felt more like a political lecture of a time that, frankly, no longer matters. In that respect, it's certainly bleak. But only in a rather disappointing way.  

 

7/10

[Hux]

The Truce (1960) Mario Bendetti

 

This book (a diary) begins with a 49-year-old man talking about retiring at 50 and implies, quite strongly, that this is the kind of ripe old age that one ought to retire at. It reminded me of that scene in Friends where they make fun of Ross kissing the 50-year old librarian as though being 50 is akin to being 80 (she walked with a cane... only when it was damp!!).

Anyway... that small (off-putting) little detail aside, the book is a rather charming story about a man named Martin Santome who, after his wife died many years ago, has successfully raised his two sons and one daughter into adulthood. In his diary, he contemplates the loss of his wife Isabel, its affect on their children, and his upcoming retirement. Then, one day, a new collection of people come to work at his office including a young (roughly the same age as his daughter) woman named Avellaneda. She is nothing special, he tells us, not very attractive, but he takes a shine to her nonetheless. Meanwhile, his daughter is dating, his eldest son is becoming more distant, and his youngest son, Jaime, is apparently gay (the book does not shy away from Santome being somewhat appalled by this). Then, an old and unpleasant acquaintance turns up with his own curious family issues. Plus, an old friend he has not seen for a long time whom he is fond of. But the main theme of the book is his grief and his new love. 

The book details all of these moments in the first person narrative of his diary. It's very effectively done, slowly building a story with a gentle and interesting style. He gradually realises he is in love with Avellaneda and confesses as much. She reciprocates his feelings and they begin living together in an apartment he keeps hidden from his children. He finds it difficult not to compare his new love with his wife. How they are similar, how they are different. He is a thoughtful man, open minded, curious, mature, contemplative (despite his homophobia). It's a joy to be in his company. There is something warm and honest about his worldview, something sincere and reflective, even when he's reactionary or constrained by the cultural mores of his time. Perhaps in a way that only those who have lost someone they love can be. Which makes the ending of the story all the more appalling. 

Spoiler

For a man to find love after dealing with so much grief only to be shafted by the universe once again, is almost comical in its nihilistic cynicism. 

There is a simplicity to this piece, a sincerity which fully justifies using a diary as the best way to examine a life. I would say the book slightly outstays its welcome (the downside to a diary form), but ultimately works very well as a small window into the life of a man who has experienced loss and wonders what to do with his life. And it's beautifully written, to the extent that this is a normal man (not a writer) detailing his life over the period of a year. A simple yet effective book. Very good.

 

8/10

Edited July 28 by Hux

[Hux]

So Big (1924) Edna Ferber

 

Finally, a woman has written a novel about my penis.

No, but seriously... I really wanted to like this. It's wonderfully written but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Each chapter felt like a beautifully constructed piece of writing, fluid, creative, and occasionally beautiful; but as much as I could recognise that (and enjoy it), I was simply never fully pulled into the piece, never blown away, the narrative just not very interesting to me. I dunno, the setting just doesn't effectively make for a compelling narrative if you ask me. Too slow, too methodical, too precise. I'm not sure why. I kept waiting for it to grab me but I was never excited by what I was reading. It reminded me a little of Precious Bane by Mary Webb but without the charm or romance.

The book opens with a woman called Selina and her son Dirk (nicknamed So Big) and, quite understandably, you assume the book will be about him. But very quickly we go back in time and look at young Selina's life. She begins as a school teacher in farming country (an area populated with other people of Dutch heritage). She lives with the Pool family and later meets and marries a farmer named Pervus. Little So Big comes along not long after this. Selina is dedicated to making the farm a success so that Dirk can experience a better life than her. She wants him to go to university. And the book does eventually switch its attention to Dirk (So Big) and his education and then later his success as a stock broker. His mother wanted him to pursue more artistic endeavours, a life with a more noteworthy and meaningful experience, but he ultimately rejects this in favour of financial rewards.

Like I say, it was difficult to get into the book. I could see that it was well written, often to a superb extent, but I just struggled to engage with it. The themes of the American dream and the apparently superior experience of a creative life over one of financial success and status were clear to see and certainly worth exploring; but again, I just wasn't that invested. It became somewhat bogged down in its own world. Selina was by far the most interesting character (more so than her son Dirk) and the book felt a little like a lament at the limitations of a woman's life at that time (her ambitions for Dirk being actually hers in reality). It also probably didn't help that my copy was one of those cheap editions that looks like it was printed in someone's garage (such aesthetically unpleasant looking books do weirdly make a difference if you ask me). That all being said, I'm not sure it would have altered my opinions too much on the content. I would definitely recommend the book. But it slightly passed me by. 

 

6/10

[Hux]

Perfect Tense (2001) Michael Bracewell

In my opinion, there are two ways to tell a great existential story; one is to use allegory (I Who Have Never Known Men etc) and the other (a far more difficult method) is to tell the story of the mundane and normal, to explore the bland poison of modern living and ennui by showing us the tedious and the day-to-day. The former produces the most well-known and successful examples of this genre but only because the latter is so hard to do successfully (so many writers get it wrong). They often make the mistake of thinking that because they are dealing with the bland, the boring, the dull, that this means they must incorporate those elements into their writing and produce those specific feelings in the piece. WRONG! It can be done but it requires a style of prose that is both beautiful and accessible, a method of writing which leaves the door open for the protagonist to express their opinions fluidly regarding their observations concerning life. This book was so good in that respect. I loved it. 

The narrator (a middle-aged man) tells us about the various office jobs he has had over the years starting with the first he had in his early twenties. And that's it. We go nowhere else into his life, no family, no hobbies, no future -- only here. He opens the book in the present day (2001) but immediately recollects one of his first office jobs in 1980. This is also where the title Perfect Tense comes from as he jumps around in his narration quite regularly. I also think there might be a slight Perec influence here (Things: a story of the sixties). But anyway... he does a great job of describing that first job, that feeling of being in the grown-up world for the first time, the anxiety and humiliation, the sense of being forced into a life you didn't necessarily want. I immediately identified with the feeling, remembered my own terrible nascent years in employment, and that horrible feeling of throwing those years away on a trivial existence for the sake of something as prosaic as money. The fact that it's the early 80s also makes you instantly know that whatever job he was doing back there is now an irrelevance, a footnote, it means nothing, and the terrible sensation of dread, markedly more pronounced because of this obvious waste of his youth, is exacerbated by the ebbing away of time. It gives you a stark sense of life being a series of banal actions, filing and paperwork, doing reports that ten years from now no-one will care about, attending meetings that twenty years later will amount to nothing, your life, your mind, your being, every inch of your existence, repeatedly squandered on menial tasks and transient moments such as making a coffee for Sandra (a boring woman who has just had a baby called Keith), then doing some photocopying, making small talk, going for lunch (a dry tuna sandwich), or just smiling falsely at people who don't matter to you and, frankly, never will. 

Our narrator maintains his position, here, in this time, whilst taking us back in incremental spurts to parts of his life that have been wasted on banal activities, the late 80s, the 90s, until he finally catches up to himself in the current moment, all his thoughts and utterances focused on the trivial yet dominant quality of working in an office. It's all so bleak... so laughable. To think that we throw our lives away on such things, on this. Yet throughout this pathetic swamp of the mundane, Bracewell's writing is sublime, often elevated to sumptuous levels, his prose majestic and fluid, always full of great poetic notions and language, even when the memory itself is something (as so many of them tend to be) as bland and forgettable as a pair of socks...

Where Les wore silk socks, as diaphanous as a debutante's hosiery, Martin wore grey cotton socks in which the elastic had snapped around their tops, thus lowering them in wrinkled tubes to reveal a patch of hairless flesh, the colour of cold chicken, above each ankle.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: books about boredom, ennui, and the relentless slog of a pointless modern existence should still make your eyes widen as they read a beautiful piece of prose, should still spark a moment of artistry in your soul. Ennui is too interesting to be dull. The book brought to mind two other books. Brian by Jeremy Cooper, in the banal aspects of a wasted life, but also The Plains by Gerald Murnane, in the lyrical prose and nested sentences (which Murnane painfully overdoes (in my opinion) but which Bracewell uses sparingly, until it becomes sincerely quite exquisite). 

So here it is. A book about sending that fax to Steve in Hull, about the commute, about gossiping behind Jill's back, about staring at a wall and wondering where your life went. I just adored this. Beautiful writing about the mundane, about the stark nothing at the heart of a Godless civilisation, about the boredom which is emblematic of modernity. See, it can be done. Magnificent.

 

10/10

[Hux]

Blue of Noon (1935) Georges Bataille

 

I remember laughing a lot when I read The Story of the Eye, at the absurd situations and unrealistic events (now they're shoving things up their arse, now she's raping a priest). I enjoyed it but couldn't take it seriously (I'm still not convinced I was supposed to). But that jovial surrealism is somewhat abandoned here in favour of a much darker narrative. It concerns a man named Troppmann who begins by telling us about a woman he refers to as Dirty (later to be revealed as Dorothy). She has disappeared (along with his wife who is, apparently, in England with the kids having left Troppmann for his abusive and unfaithful ways... we never hear about them again). Then there's a woman called Lavare. And one called Xenie. But none of this is frankly important despite each of them blatantly representing something or other (Lavare = Marxism, Xenie = aristocracy, and so on). The point of the book, as I saw it, was trying to enjoy your permissive life as a weathervane whilst fascism rears up behind you. 

There's no plot really, the book just opens in London, then Paris, then (the more interesting stuff) in Barcelona before Troppmann and Dorothy head to Germany at the end. None of it really impressed me, in truth, but I did recognise the quality of Bataille's writing again, its short, snappy sentences and colourful prose. Troppmann spends most of the novel either sobbing, drunk, ill, or in some kind of fever dream, talking about wanting to spit in people's faces or lamenting his woes and generally feeling sorry for himself. It's a heightened style of storytelling which, if I'm brutally honest, was too melodramatic and eventually a little grating. In real life, nobody bursts out laughing at mild quips, violently sobs because it's Tuesday, or wrings every last droplet of emotion from an event otherwise banal. But you get the picture. It's slightly over-the-top (like Story of the Eye) but with none of the laughs. I enjoyed it but ultimately felt it was a little on the forgettable side. 

Meanwhile, we have the issue of the rise of fascism. The book ends with the couple in Germany, watching a group of Hitler youth prosaically prancing around them. In an era (today) where styling your hair wrong can lead to an accusation of being a fascist, I found the real thing, bubbling away behind events in the novel, to be a difficult concept to remove entirely from the context of Tropmann's indulgent actions. In other words, he (and others evidently) are relentlessly advocating for or just passively tolerating a culture which was instrumental in the rise of the very political movement they fear. He treats his wife like crap and has almost NOTHING to say about the welfare of his children. He frequents a place called the Criolla where small boys dress as girls for the sexual amusement of patrons. But again, nothing to say about this. The notion that fascism appeared fully formed without these contributing factors makes the whole thing hard to swallow. 'Gee, we were all just having fun with small boys dressed as girls when these mean fascists turned up and spoiled it all'. Well yes... quite. Society tends to move right after your disgusting (normalised) habits have started to concern them (and this should not be quite as surprising as you make out). God only knows what fate his children endured. We'll never know. They simply didn't matter. I dunno, this thing left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.  

 

6/10

[Hux]

Astraea (2024) Kate Kruimink

 

I read the first chapter of this novella and thought it was amazing writing, creative and lyrical, almost stream-of-consciousness in its fluidity. But as it went along, it slightly lost something and became a little more conventional in its style as the narrative developed, a basic third person narration with quite a lot of dialogue. That doesn't mean I didn't like it, it just didn't quite live up to that first chapter. 

The book is about a group of convict women (and their children) aboard a ship from England and heading (though I don't recall it being overtly stated) to a penal colony in Australia. The whole book takes place in this confined space, an extremely isolated and claustrophobic environment. The primary character is Maryanne, a 15-year-old girl who, we later discover, has been forced to leave her newborn baby behind with a relative. The book never fully fleshes out the rest of the ship's contingent, its sailors a peripheral shadow in the background, the many women prisoners essentially kept at arm's length, and the ultimate destination somewhat vague. But this is fairly deliberate and works well for the piece creating an atmosphere of obscurity and solitude. We only really get to know the doctor, the chaplain, and some of the other women. Meanwhile, one of the women is very ill and another is pregnant but neither of them receive much care or compassion from these men. 

The book does a good job of keeping things obscure, maintaining a kind of dystopian quality, an eerie sense of the other worldly, a nebulous uncertainty, the ship potentially being full of ghosts, lost souls, the swelling ocean a monstrous metaphor for death itself. While it's very effective and has echoes of other books playing with existential themes (I Who Have Never Known Men came to mind but that might just be due to the focus on women), it never quite reaches their levels. It's a good novella but ultimately a little too lightweight (and as I mentioned, I felt the writing dropped off as it went along). It also reminded me of The Sharks by Bjorneboe but that too might simply be the ship serving as a metaphor for life.

A nice eerie piece of speculative fiction which plays with a few intriguing ideas and conjures up a dreamlike atmosphere. Despite the flaws, I enjoyed it and would definitely recommend.

 

7/10

[Hux]

Whatever (1994) Michel Houellebecq

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. It's Houellebecq's first novel so maybe that explains the sense of something being off, the lack of his usual humour, his nihilism, his style, and the focus on Western civilisation's decline as a whole. This thing is more constrained, more depressing, and more precise in its exploration of sex as a capitalist commodity (ushering in a future of men who can acquire an abundance and men who, one might even call them incels, cannot). As ever Houellebecq is ahead of the curve and sees what's coming before it arrives but the book felt like it lacked something. 

The story revolves around an unnamed computer programmer coming to terms with his worsening ennui and depression, his banal life, his dull meetings, the book a classic example of the existential novel (which I normally love but without the opinion which I prefer these books to have). This is almost a very mature work, cold, distant, a more thoughtful version of Houellebecq which is surprising as his later works become a lot more cynical and funny. The book's prose is also very matter of fact, occasionally staid and functional, and the world his protagonist inhabits is indeed dull and lifeless. When he encourages his friend Tisserand, an ugly man who cannot get laid, to kill a black man who has left the club with a girl and taken her to the beach, there is, of course, a strong whiff of Meursault and his Arab. And here, in this moment, aside from the general swipes at modernity, we have one of the main themes of the piece. Namely, that the sexual liberation movement did not produce a socialist free-love environment where everyone benefited, but instead was gobbled up by the capitalist decree of status and consumption. In other words, high value men will reap the rewards while ugly men, like Tisserand, will sit in the corner of the club being repeatedly rejected. It's at this point that the Smiths lyrics popped into my head:

There's a club if you'd like to go. You could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go and you stand on your own. And you leave on your own. And you go home. And you cry. And you want to die.

It's an interesting conclusion which Houellebecq is making and one which I think has proven to be correct. He even includes some Muslim terrorism in the book to once again reiterate that he sees what's coming while the rest of us are busy buying CDs and bed linen. It's very effective and very accurate. But again, I just didn't enjoy this as much as his other works for some reason. It was, for me, a little too dry, and a little too on the nose. It works well as an existential piece but it lacks Houellebecq's nihilistic touch, his personality not as fully present here as it is in his later works. As a first novel it's pretty great but compared to what was to come, it's a tad forgettable. 

 

7/10

[Hux]

Butcher's Crossing (1960) John Williams

 

Our protagonist, Will Andrews, is a young, idealist from Boston who comes to the western frontier (Butcher's Crossing) to make his name (or, like all young people, do something to justify his existence). He meets up with a hunter named Miller and his friend Charley Hoge and, using his own funds, agrees to sponsor a hunt for buffalo hide in the mountains where Miller knows a secret place. Miller has been itching to do this for years and now has the foolish young money of Andrews to back him. As they prepare for the trip, Andrews also falls in love with a German prostitute called Francine but doesn't fully grasp his feelings for her before acquiring a skinner named Schneider to accompany them. And so, off they go... on their great money-making adventure. It takes them several weeks to get to the place Miler has promised them. When they do, things start very nicely and they kill and skin thousands of buffalo but Miller, ignoring the relentless warnings and hostility of Schneider, pushes his luck and wants to stay and kill them all. Then the winter snows come and the men find themselves trapped here for months with no means of escape. They simply have to survive. Which they do. Only to find further hardship down the road and a great irony when they finally return to the very changed Butcher's crossing. 

There seems to be some general consensus that the major theme of the book is the visceral call of nature. Man's place among it. But to me this is an existential piece, about the search for meaning in a meaningless universe, about the pursuit of a great purpose or experience which will justify the risk taken in seeking it out. Andrews, in particular, is a young man hoping to find something which is out there, somewhere, a means by which to make his impact upon the world. But as is always the case, there is nothing to be found, no greatness to achieve, only disappointment and mediocrity. It seems to be asking the question: is it worth it? Is any of this worth it? Those themes resonate very powerfully and it was that part of the book that most impressed me. It's not entirely original but it does a pretty good job. E.G. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. 

That being said, the book's major flaws come with Williams doing what all writers of westerns seem to do; namely his endless descriptions of the environment and the weather, painstaking delivered in laborious detail regarding the minutia of the journey, the routine, the monotonous, day-to-day action of the men's rigorous endeavours. He dwells on the landscape a little too much, the colour of things, the sounds and feel of the world they have entered. And then more in the next chapter. And then more in the next. At first you don't mind but it becomes rather relentless. The men travel for days and we get every minor aspect of it, they find their beasts in a valley and can shoot thousands of them without interference, skin them, eat beans, drink coffee, over and over. The painful routine becomes a procedural with a moral at its heart that frankly could have been told with far fewer words, but which, through ceaseless description of one small event after the other drags you, kicking and screaming, into yet more trivial motion of the day and the men's wasted experiences. But then Williams seems to want his cake and eat it too. He forces you to read all this endless descriptive routine but then, with a staggering casual nonchalance bordering on the comical, he tells us that 'weeks and weeks went by. Months and months.' Hang on a minute... if you could do that with the deluge of snow and the imprisonment why couldn't you do it with the build-up of environment and actions? Did I really need page after page of the journey, the landscape, the killing of buffalo and skinning them, the beans and coffee, the snow and the buffalo, the hides and the snow, the beans and the skinning and so on? This part of the book definitely dragged for me despite the existential themes keeping me interested. And then, out of nowhere, to further emphasise its brilliance, you get this kind of exquisite prose:
 

He had been here in the high valley for all of that part of his life that mattered; and when he looked out upon it -- its flatness, and its yellow-greenness, its high walls of mountain wooded with the deep green of pine in which ran the flaming red -gold of turning aspen, its jutting rock and hillock, all roofed with the intense blue of the airless sky -- it seemed to him that the contours of the place flowed beneath his eyes, that his very gaze shaped what he saw, and in turn gave his own existence form and place

At other times, however, it's slightly prosaic with too much flowery language and stale repetition (all the sunsets and mountain sides are golden-yellow, reddish-brown, greenish-blue and so on, etc). Williams makes you work for it. And it would have been easier to ignore all this if he gave me a character to get behind (Andrews is a mere shell of a child who represents the folly of youth and Miller isn't quite demonic enough to be like the judge from Blood Meridian -- which this clearly influenced btw). Therefore, I liked it but I never entirely loved it, captivated by the themes but not always by the writing. At the end, Williams pulls no punches and drags everything from these men's hands (as expected). Life does not give you what you want, after all, only what you get. Andrews has been forced to open his eyes. When they return, they discover that the world has changed and, despite their hardship, no-one is that interested in buying buffalo hides. Even at the very end of the book, when he returns to Francine and to love, the fantasy of a happy-ever-after relationship also loses its power. She is, after all, merely a woman and does not offer any meaning either. Because there is no meaning to be had.

This is a great piece of work but with many flaws (too many for me to ignore... too many dry descriptions of the many days as they merged together). The existential qualities of the piece are what continue to stand out to me. So here it is, another novel about seeking your place in the world, the great white whale, the marlin, the woman, the money, the great unknown, the vital something which will make life worth living, worth chasing, worth something. The search for meaning when there's no meaning to be found.

'Young people,' McDonald said contemptuously. 'You always think there's something to find out.'
'Yes sir,' said Andrews.
'Well, there's nothing,' said McDonald. 'You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you -- that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done.'

 

7/10
 

[Hux]

Paradais (2021) Fernanda Melchor 

 

Two young men named Franco (Fatboy) and Polo regularly get drunk together despite not always liking each other's company. Franco is obsessed with his neighbour, a married woman (with two kids) named Senora Marian. He badly wants to have sex with her and fantasises about it regularly. Polo, meanwhile, is having sex with his cousin who later gets pregnant. During one of their drunken sessions, in an abandoned mansion they often frequent, Franco casually brings up the idea of raping Marian. Polo understandably doesn't take him seriously, but gradually the two of them begin to plot a robbery which, in truth, is a mere smokescreen for Franco to satisfy his sexual desires. 

The bottom line with this book is: you're either gonna like the stream-of-consciousness writing or you ain't. I found some of it quite thrilling and fun to read to begin with but some of it a little dull and indulgent (so pretty much my standard response to most stream-of consciousness writing). Truth be told, books like this (with a very wafer thin plot) are an excuse to luxuriate in the prose and go on various tangents and flight of fancy (as Melchor does several times). Again, you'll either love it or loathe it depending on your relationship with this kind of writing. I mostly found it entertaining but I've read so many books like this that, after a while, they feel a bit samey to me. She does at least avoid being repetitive (a trap many writers fall into with this kind of prose) and so I give her credit for that. When her sentences were short, they came alive and felt vibrant. But when she engaged in the classic trait of sentences that run on, and on, and on, and on, I became not only less engaged but positively bored. With these kinds of flowing paragraphs (a torrent of words), there's always a sense of missing information because you're moving on to new information so quickly, so breathlessly reading, one sentence merging with the next, with little opportunity to digest any of it. You're either gonna love that or again... you ain't. I always read stuff like this and feel like I'm being manipulated, stopped from enjoying the words by having so many of them flung at me. This is why I'm always suspicious of stream-of-consciousness writing. It feels like it's hiding mediocrity behind a veneer of intense and dizzying language. Presumably, this is deliberate but I don't generally enjoy it. Like I said, when she lets the language breathe in a shorter sentence, this was when I felt her writing became significantly more impressive. But anyway... 

Of this type of writing I would say the book is excellent and would definitely recommend it (if you like that sort of thing). I can take or leave it. But if you struggle with stream-of-consciousness, it might infuriate you. Hard to judge with this type of style. When it was good, it was great. But when it was bad, it was tedious. Ultimately, it probably won't live long in the memory. Worth a look though. 

 

6/10

[Hux]

The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1970) Peter Handke

This is the very oddball story of a man named Bloch who once played as a goalkeeper for a football team but now, years later, having wandered the streets, the cinemas, and the bars, has found himself in a situation where he has choked a woman to death. There's no motive and no real concern about it -- it was simply a thing that happened. And as blunt as my description is, it's positively flamboyant in its expressiveness in comparison to the stilted prose of this book.

And that's a big problem. The writing is like a dull thud, a headache of stilted sentences lacking beauty (the book's biggest obstacle to being enjoyable), and containing language of such an autistic coldness, a myriad of simplistic descriptions and unembellished prose, that it becomes slightly painful to read. This is no doubt intended to reflect Bloch's own mind and personality, his interpretation of the world (think Meursault but somehow more staid and empty), but it doesn't make for an entertaining piece of literature. As a character, Bloch doesn't seem to do or think much of anything, merely existing as a bundle of organic material and nerves, going through the motions, both as a life-form and a consciousness. Like I said, it's not exactly fun to read but it does a very effective job of grinding the narrative down to an almost lifeless standstill. Bloch's motives are unclear, almost irrelevant, his hopes and dreams inaccessible, his past a fairly murky area of vague nothingness (there's mention of an ex-wife) and his only seemingly attainable humanity can be found in his love of football.

That aside, there's not much to recommend here. This man is neither compelling nor horrific, he simply is. As he wanders aimlessly, losing reality, gaining obscurity, there is a sense that his crime is meaningless and frankly, no more important than whether you kick the ball to the left or the right, or right down the centre. Either way, I was actually hoping for more football in the narrative. Maybe even a description of a beautiful, defence splitting pass but all I got was a man with no personality who was slowly morphing into the general nothingness that surrounded him. The final penalty itself (down the middle at a keeper who stays still and sees it coming) is a rather nice metaphor for... something... but I'm not sure what. Worth a look but don't get your hopes up.

 

5/10

[Hux]

Our Lady of the Flowers (1943) Jean Genet

 

Having loved The Thief's Journal and delighted in its poetry as prose, I was looking forward to finally getting around to this. Sadly, I found it -- the occasional flourish aside -- to be slightly unbearable. Yes, there are still the occasional moments of lyrical writing, where his language is sublime and reaches dazzling heights; but these felt few and far between compared to the more stagnant language and dull character studies here (that seemingly never end despite only really focusing on two characters). Plus, even when it's good, it somehow manages to be a little drab and mundane, though always remaining wonderfully in the gutter...
 

I have already spoken of my fondness for odours, the strong odours of the earth, of latrines, of the loins of Arabs and, above all, the odour of my farts, which is not the odour of my shhhhhhh, a loathsome odour, so much so that here again I bury myself beneath the covers and gather in my cupped hands my crushed farts, which I carry to my nose

Oh, who are you kidding, we've all done it.

Anyway, these morsels of depraved transgressive (and fun) examples of prose aside, the book is a quagmire of repetition regarding the two aforementioned main characters (Divine and Darling). Divine is described as a drag queen but would (especially since Genet insists on using the 'she' pronoun) probably be considered trans by modern standards. Darling, meanwhile, is one of her many boyfriends, a pimp, who offers her the only meaningful love story of her life. Darling also introduces the vague concept of a young man, a murderer, referred to as our lady of the flowers against the backdrop of Genet's own existence in a prison cell. He is writing this book from that perspective and regularly reminds the reader (something he did in the Thief's Journal) of his position as the unreliable narrator. All of that was fine and easy to enjoy, but the reason I found this book such a slog is because it doesn't really go anywhere in terms of plot or characters. The Thief's Journal moved around Europe, entailed plot points, homosexual affairs, people who came and went, but this... this is just endless snapshots, moments from Divine and Darling's seedy lives and little else (there is the occasional sex worker, criminal, pimp underworld type now and then but nothing substantial). Pick a random page and you'll find some smutty nonsense about Divine that isn't very interesting (Divine sucks him). Pick another page and it's more of the same (Darling mugs a guy). I just became so insanely bored by it all in truth. Which is a shame. 

I don't know if I'm misremembering The Thief's Journal but the poetic language there felt so much more impressive than it does here. It was lively and exciting, often exquisite. With this it felt laboured and bland, perhaps even a little disjointed. Perhaps he improved as he went along (most writers do), this being his first piece and Journal his last (though only separated by a few years). But I don't know. I only know that this didn't excite me in the same way that Thief's Journal did. It's still worth reading, transgressive, unique, subversive, and very much exploring a specific subject matter that others shied away from at the time (and published knee deep in a global war). But I really struggled with this. At some point I'll try Miracle of the Rose and will hope to regain my previous sense of awe at his writing. 

 

4/10

[Hux]

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) Shirley Jackson

As children, we all knew of houses nearby that had rumours attached to them, creepy places with stories about the eerie occupants, places best avoided. So here we get the perspective of those very people, the ones inside the house. 

The opening chapter of this book really does tantalise the reader, a young 18-year-old girl (Mary Katherine... Merricat to her friends), is grocery shopping in her local village and seems to get stared at by various people, her own internal monologue suggesting that she hates these people as much as they hate her, before, finally, she encounters a man in a shop who very passive aggressively insinuates that she, and her family should simply leave their community. It's all very mysterious, unnerving, and does a good job of making you want to learn more.

Fortunately, the very next chapter fills in the gaps: Merricat and her (very rich) family live in a large mansion away from the village and six years earlier several members of the family were poisoned to death with arsenic that had been put in the sugar bowl. Constance, the older sister, was accused but acquitted and so now, the remaining family members -- Constance, Merricat and uncle Julian (plus the cat Jonas) -- live alone here, wonderfully secluded, eerily remote, peacefully content in their little corner of the world. They have become shut-ins, local oddities, and the villagers increasingly view them as curious at best, nefarious at worst. But they are happy, for the most part, and all is well until Charles, a cousin, arrives and causes some degree of upheaval. 

I really enjoyed this, the first two thirds in particular, the cosy atmosphere it creates with these three people isolated from the world on their large estate and increasingly viewed by the community as disturbing, unpleasant, even dangerous people. Merricat has a strong sense of other worldly innocence, even delusion, but she also craves the cosiness of this familiar world, to the extent that she eventually barricades the sides of the house, almost cocoons them into their little corner of existence. Jackson really does create a tangible atmosphere of both uncertainty but also warmth. I'm not sure if the twist in the story is actually considered a twist given that you can see it coming a mile off, but it never really felt especially important to the general theme or character of the piece. This is a book which is more concerned with otherness and individuality, with the delicate safety blankets we acquire either by trauma or just daily living. These are where the ghost stories about certain local houses and neighbours begin. I was slightly losing interest in the final third when the 'twist' is revealed (rather unnecessarily if you ask me) but overall, the book is superb and highly recommended.

 

8/10

 

 

Edited August 27 by Hux

[Hux]

Heaven and Hell (2007) Jon Kelman Stefasson

Set around 1900 in an Icelandic fishing village, the book focuses on a boy who joins one of the fishing expeditions with his friend Bardur (or that weird squiggly letter Nordics use instead of a d). Before departing, Bardur insists on reading one more line from his Icelandic translation of Milton's Paradise Lost. This particular book (and its Christian contents) become a recurring them in the book often dwelling on aspects of divinity and death (plus the general power and beauty of Milton's poetry). When they are out at sea, Bardur has forgotten his waterproof clothes and this proves costly leading to his death during a bad storm. Returning to land, the boy is distraught and confused by the disinterest of the others, of the world, and he seeks to return the copy of Paradise Lost to the man that gave it to Burdur, seeks to find meaning in life and literature. All of this is set amid a cold environment in a bleak existence. 

Gotta say... I really did not like this. It started well, the first third was okay, capturing the cold, hard life of these men making their living from such a dangerous and isolated occupation. The language was a little cliched if you ask me but saved by short sentences that reiterated the importance of life, the power of literature, and, later, the terrible significance of grief. But as it went on, it became more contrived, with a lot of deliberate pretension in the prose, a sudden slew of run-on sentences (annoying given that I hate them) that refuse to engage with the possibility of a full stop. Then, in total contrast, terse language which was a little dull and blunt. The two combined to irritate me but for very different reasons, mostly, however, it was the Cormac McCarthy-esque (and presumably inspired by) drivel about the ageless sky and the weeping moon and the crimson horizon. The endless reminders that the sea is a vast creature which is alive. Is it really? You don't say. That he keeps referring to 'the boy' also felt like a nod to McCarthy. I just loathe that stuff.

This is one of those books that wants to explore the profundity of life, wants to be existential and bleak, but instead it wallows in predictable platitudes and adjectives designed to suggest an austere view of life that feel false and forced. I didn't buy any of it. Much like McCarthy, it felt too painstakingly deliberate, inauthentic, as though Kalman wanted to write about a subject matter that he isn't actually qualified to properly grasp. I wouldn't say it's a bad book or anything but the amount of praise heaped on this thing is bewildering to me. It's fine. It's not my thing though. There are only so many cliches I take. This is a book that is trying too hard. 

I'm sure this will upset a lot of people (because the book appears to be universally loved) but I just don't like this kind of writing. There's something very phoney about it. It's definitely worth a look but ignore the (inexplicable) rave reviews and make up your own mind. 

 

3/10

[Hux]

A Posthumous Confession (1894) Marcellus Emants

 

I dislike books that open with something spicy then expect you to wait as the author goes on a tangent about other things before we get to it. That being said, I didn't mind it here because the opening revelation (he murdered his wife) isn't all that important to the quality of writing nor, for that matter, to the content of the piece (which is the book's weak point but we'll get to that). So, as I said, our narrator, William Termeer, begins by confessing to this murder and proceeds to tell us how he got there, became that man, by taking us back to his youth, his defining experiences, his formative years.

I read the first third of this book and was convinced it was going to be a new favourite; it's everything I love in a book, beautiful prose, full of creative language, nested sentences, with a misanthropic protagonist burdened by antisocial tendencies he doesn't fully understand, and a bildungsroman narrative that develops slowly. The book has so much in common with others that came later such as The Stranger and No Longer Human, novels examining the life of the outsider, people who don't know how to be human. Termeer admits that he is performing, mimics the normalcy of others, and laments his shyness and inability to be confident and interesting. He has no hinterland, no personality, and is essentially an unpleasant and cold individual who, unsurprisingly, has few redeeming qualities. At school he didn't care about anything, and this continues into adulthood, his only noticeable vice, or feature of humanity, being that he wants sex with women -- something beyond his means because he didn't know how to communicate with them. There's a rather wonderful part where, in Switzerland, he meets a woman and tries to ingratiate himself into her life. But as soon as more impressive men arrive, bigger, louder, more fun, more overtly social, she immediately drops him as though he never existed. He is a dour and emotionally distant man by comparison. But is this entirely his fault? What can he realistically do to become someone else? The book takes us through his early years into adult life, into his continued inability to become a person. And all of these experiences are brought to us with prose that is just sublime, even when it is filled with self-pity and vitriol.
 

If I am cold, indifferent, bent on sensual pleasure, beyond the reach of altruism, nevertheless a few bars of Wagner, a glass of champagne, a beautiful painting, the echo of church music, can -- or rather could -- fill me with enthusiastic, voluble friendliness, cerebral reverence, self-denying love. At such times I feel as if my sluggish blood suddenly begins to flow faster, a tension arises in my slack nerves, and it becomes light, colourful, lively in my exhausted, grey brain. I feel a revulsion for my ordinary sober self, with its indifference toward what interests people, what holds them together, and its singular desire some day to cause pain, particularly to women; and as the yearning to offer some great sacrifice makes my soul glow with sombre enthusiasm, there arises before my misty eyes the immaculately beautiful form in chastely girded attire of her whom I kneeling adore but never shall possess.

It's rich, decadent prose, luxurious and full, with creativity and humour, often self-deprecating, and best of all, always introspective. Despite being an awful person, you listen intently, even sympathise with Termeer, and wonder how he will find a way to portray himself as the victim in his next experience. There was also a nice little meta moment when Termeer goes to see a play (which he loved) by a playwright called... Marcellus Emants.

And as I said, I thought this was going to be a new favourite of mine because I was loving every inch of it. But then the book starts to outstay its welcome slightly; Emants focuses (perhaps understandably given the premise) on Termeer's relationship with his wife Anna. It stands to reason that he wants to pay off the opening confession with some context but the book gets bogged down here, and loses its way. Their courtship, relationship, and marriage is uninteresting even when Emants throws in the death of their child (which Termeer is openly glad of), and even the flirtatious potential affair between Anna with De Kantere offers little more than an opportunity for Termeer to feel sorry for himself. It's all a little dry and has the detrimental effect of stopping Emants from writing his fluid introspective prose, this now replaced with standard story telling, dialogue, events. It's still very good but the magnificent self-centred ruminations of Termeer are now somewhat interrupted and reduced to a melodramatic soap opera. Even the ending (he gets away with it) can't save it as he returns, rather beautifully, to his selfish and cowardly ways.

Nonetheless, I mostly loved this and would definitely recommend it.

 

9/10

[Hux]

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1956) Yukio Mishima

 

I generally enjoy Yukio Mishima's books, the stark prose, the terse, matter of fact language and structure. But this one slightly left me a little... numb. I mean, I thought it was fine. Totally... fine. I can't really say much more than that regarding both the language and the story. It's functional and good but I can't imagine this will live long in the memory. I seem to like his work less with each new book but that could be pure coincidence. 

This one is about a young man during the war named Mizoguchi who, as a boy, is told stories about the beauty of the temple of the golden pavilion by his Buddhist priest father and is, as a result, in awe of its (imagined) beauty. Mizoguchi has a stutter and struggles to make friends, focusing his attention on his own spiritual journey. He eventually becomes an acolyte at the temple (somewhat underwhelmed by the real thing when he sees it), and befriends a young man named Tsurukawa. But later, at university, he becomes friends with a more cynical young man named Kashiwagi who has a clubbed foot and seduces women by making them pity him (Byron?). As the book goes along, Mizoguchi has experiences that seem to compel him to become more isolated and bitter, fantasising about the destruction of the temple, and his own potential suicide. By the end of the book, he plans to burn the temple down and poison himself but, at the last minute, changes his mind and chooses to live.

Like I said, it was fine. I can't really say much more about it. It's well written and explores interesting themes but I just didn't find much here that excited me. It plodded along. Maybe it's the fact that Mishima has taken this story from real life (a monk named Hayashi Yoken burned down the Kinkaku-Ji temple in 1950) and Mishima appears to have researched this thoroughly and based the book on this event. As such, it felt like it lacked something to me, like it was a little underwhelming and without his usual touch of the artistic, the usual personal aspect not quite there. Writers often do this, take a real event and fictionalise it, and frankly, I've never really known why (especially when it's done so coldly and methodically). This one just kinda passed me by. I haven't much more to say about it.  

 

6/10

[Hux]

Balcony in the Forest (1958) Julien Gracq

I remember reading The Opposing Shore and thinking that one paragraph was the most exquisite prose I'd ever read but the next was the worst bloated fart I'd ever come across. The whole book was just relentless baroque language, overly verbose, neatly executed nested sentences, which at times produced genuinely magnificent language but at others was overwrought and self-indulgent. Anyway, I wanted to read him again at some point but I was slightly put off by that initial experience. 

So I finally got round to this, and I must say, by comparison, it's delightfully understated (at least as far as the prose is concerned). The language here is more restrained to say the least but, interestingly, covers almost identical ground when it comes to themes. Because this, just like Opposing Shore, is about a man waiting for war to happen. But this time, it's not a fictional landscape, it's the Belgian Ardennes region at the start of the Second World War in 1939, the forests of this area, a small, seemingly insignificant location of little apparent strategic interest to the Nazis but a place, nonetheless, that must be guarded, mined, and manned. Our protagonist, Grange, is, along with his men, lost in a dripping wet woodland of fairies and mystery, a misty landscape of ambient uncertainty, all the while waiting for the war to eventually find them. The book creates a beautiful atmosphere of both anxiety and magic, of being hidden from the world but knowing that it will come crashing into their lives any day now. And all this is done with very understated language, nicely curated prose, restrained, thoughtful, and even a little cautious. I'm not sure if Gracq read The Tartar Steppe (1940) but he seems to be equally fascinated by the idea of waiting for a conflict as Buzatti was. Waiting for something. For life. For death. Who knows, but it's wonderful.

That all being said I thought the lack of action or progress in the narrative made the piece a little dull at times. And then, as if to fill the book with something, he throws in a bizarre romance with a girl called Mona which, to me at least, came across as slightly false, redundant, and mostly pointless. I guess the book couldn't stay in the woods forever. The relationship started well, with a rather erotic explosion of promiscuous sex (the best kind) but after this initial intrigue, their relationship was essentially a background noise of little consequence and added very little. 

Yet despite this treading of water which the book engages in for long periods, I really did like it a lot. There is something beautiful in it, something sad, stoic, eerie, something which is very human. His writing is always superb albeit in service of a story that is wafer thin and very precarious, especially when you consider he already covered this ground in The Opposing Shore. But it's another great example of this particular genre, the wasted years, the wasted life, the sensation that life is being experienced by others, elsewhere, in more dynamic fashion, but not here, where we are simply waiting. Always waiting. 

Not without its flaws, but highly recommended all the same. I wonder if Buzzati and Gracq ever met, perhaps in some room with magazines, just sat there in silence with each other, waiting for the other to say something.

 

8/10

 

 

Edited September 11 by Hux

[Hux]

Tamarisk Row (1974) Gerald Murnane

 

I generally like to read at least two books by an author before making any concrete judgements about them. Having read The Plains, I found it to be frankly bloated and self-indulgent, a book where the prose was overdone and often ludicrous, to a laughable degree, endless nested sentences that, when more closely scrutinised, revealed themselves to be meaningless drivel (albeit deliberately at times). The whole thing felt overwrought and performative and, a few moments here and there aside, I was not impressed by it. So here is my second stab at Murnane. And this was very... different. So much so that it's difficult to come to any hard conclusions regarding his writing especially since here, it's not remotely the same prose at all (possibly due to this being his first book) and I'm pleased to note (because it seems to be increasingly rare) that his style has clearly changed over the years. Either that or he simply chooses to write in different styles each time (hard to tell since I've only read two of his books). But this was nothing like The Plains where the writing was a swirling madness of overdone lyrical sentences, this being more blunt and hard edged, often a little detached and cold. But the fact remains I liked it a lot more than The Plains (not that this one doesn't still have issues).

The book begins after the war with a man named Augustine Killeaton who is interested in horse racing and, more specifically, in gambling. Augustine even manages to buy his own horse (Clementia) and has a big first win before the horse is sadly put to death. This win almost sustains Augustine for the next several years of his life, becomes a beacon of hope for a future fantasy which, in and of itself, is rather pathetic. The first third of the book essentially focuses on him leading you to believe that it's his story. But once he's older and married, and has a son named Clementine, the son, and his own version of the fantasy world, becomes the primary focus of the novel. Clementine creates his own brand of reality in the back garden using marbles to create an imaginary environment of small farms and race courses. Alongside these loner-like behaviours, he also becomes interested in girls and what might be between their legs. There are tangents upon which several threads are attached (a school bully called Barry Launder, the violent neighbour Mr Glasscock, the Australian landscape as an ongoing theme) but no real plot to consider, only the curious upbringing and formative experiences of Clementine against the backdrop of his family life. 

I can't say that I loved it but there was something here that definitely appealed to me (certainly more than The Plains). But it's strange because where The Plains was overly flowery, this, as I said, is blunt and cold, an entirely different style of language. It's more interesting but still didn't necessarily speak to me. There's a lot of ambiguity and oddness to it (close third person narration but which isn't omniscient etc) which I'm tempted to interpret as first novel naivety. Nonetheless, I'm always ready to praise any writer who's willing to try something different and doesn't just stick to one voice, one style, one isolated note for the rest of is career (even if, as the case appears to be, Murnane does stick to the same themes of Australia and desolate landscapes). This was a clunky novel at time but with some genuinely impressive qualities. As such, I am intrigued to turn reading two of Murnane's books into reading three at some point.

 

6/10

[Hux]

Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964) Hubert Selby Jnr

 

"Hey big daddio, you wanna be a square, honey, or get hip with the queers on the down low, dig the marijuana, and hang with the seamen and the doggies, shhhhhhh and shake on the scene, the big man, the fairies, in the big house, until we get to crazy-ville."

Yeah, look, I think I hate this stuff. I really think I just utterly hate this Yank drivel. It's all so tiresome to me, the street talk, the queers and drugs, the hustlers and negroes (are you shocked by such transgressive language!!). No, of course you aren't. Because you're not twelve. I really do loathe this type of Americana, the beatnik hipster prose, the idea that rebelling against normalcy is some great act of enthralling provocation and revolution. And then there's the fact that the writing is painful to read. I mean, this isn't as repugnant as Naked Lunch, or as incoherent, but it's not that far off. The more I read it, the more I conclude that modernist American literature is abysmal and performative nonsense, trapped by the influence of cinema, the constant need for visuals, with scenes and vignettes, anti-writing, with an inability to shake off the desire for a visual medium, or worse, just puerile language designed to shock or amuse but never with any meaningful artistry or finesse. It's all so Americana, so try-hard, and I hate it.

The book looks at several characters in a part of Brooklyn in the 1950s, prostitutes, hoodlums, transvestites, queers, (are you shocked?), and Harry, a machinist and union member (if he sounds dull, don't worry he's a closeted gay so it's suddenly exciting again). There's swearing, gay sex, violent rape, and two-bit criminals (are you shocked?). The prose style is as demonstrated above, juvenile and exaggerated, as though a drunk is talking to you at a bar, using tedious slang and dated phrases, all the while making sure to be naughty and sweary and dirty and yawn. 

I hate this stuff. I hate this writing. I hate this beatnik crap. If you've read any of the transgressive Americana stuff from the 50s, 60's and even the 70's, then you've essentially read this. It's nothing new, just more of the same. And I hate it. Bleurgh!! I just f**cking hate it. Banal. 

 

3/10

[Hux]

Fog (1914) Miguel de Unamuno

 

Well, this was a curious little thing. It's the story of a man named Augusto Perez, rich, intellectual, refined, but a little mercurial. One day, strolling down the street, he sees a woman (or more precisely, he sees her eyes) and comes to the conclusion that he is in love with her. He follows her, speaks to the building's concierge about her, and decides to woo her. He discovers that she is called Eugenia and he writes her a letter, then gets invited into her apartment by her uncle and aunt, doing his best to ingratiate himself into their lives. He discovers she has a lover but pursues her nonetheless. Meanwhile, he meets another woman named Rosario and decides that he might also be in love with her; like I said, he is a very mercurial man, prone to flights of fancy and introspection. His cat and mouse pursuit of Eugenia continues while her cat and mouse rejection of him becomes more convoluted. Is she is a psychological experiment to him or is he a psychological experiment to her? 

It's hard to describe this book. It felt trivial and silly at times, full of frivolity and light-hearted humour. Augusto is a man without a care in the world, his pet dog, Orfeo, his companion, his servants Liduvina and her husband Domingo, ever present and willing to humour him. Then there's his friend Victor with whom he pursues philosophical conversations which often spiral into curious notions of what constitutes the self or reality. 
 

"They say no one knows what their own voice really sounds like."
"Or what their face looks like. Speaking for myself, I confess that one of the things that frightens me the most is looking at myself in the mirror when I'm alone and no one can see me. I start to doubt my own existence and to imagine, looking at myself from the outside, that I'm a dream, a fictional character."
"Then stop looking at yourself."

There's a lot of this between them, explorations of reality, identity, all written in a manner that is very entertaining, playing with themes of the self, of love, of identity and reality. Then, towards the end of the book, things really get interesting as Augusto, now wanting to commit suicide, meets de Unamuno himself, the writer of this very novel, and is told by him that he doesn't really exist, that he is merely a fictional character and therefore cannot choose to be alive or dead. Augusto implies that the total opposite is, in fact, true, that de Unamuno is a character dreaming of a self which has conjured a new reality for them both. Despite this, it never gets heavy-handed, and always maintains its charming, soft touch. The book is a bizarre yet fascinating exploration of ideas that become provocative and thoughtful. I remember reading Breakfast of Champions and thinking it was rather original when the character meets Vonnegut but now I realise it was done long before this by other writers (de Unamuno wrote this in 1907 and published it in 1914). This book is very inventive in so many ways but all the while, remains very fun to read. 

It's magnificent. I really enjoyed it. And I especially liked the final chapter, narrated by the dog, Orfeo, because he too can dream of his master and by doing so become conscious and by doing so became real. Maybe he was the only one who existed all along.

 

8/10

[Hux]

Unfinished Business (2023) Michael Bracewell

Having recently read and loved Perfect Tense, I was keen to read more of Michael Bracewell. This particular book might have been a poor choice, though, given that it was his first book since Perfect Tense was published in 2001 (so a gap of 22 years). Might have made more sense to read one of his earlier pieces. But anyway, I did not really find this one as captivating.

For me, the major problem is his use of third person narration. It doesn't entirely make sense for a book like this. What I loved about Perfect Tense was that you got to hear the single voice of the author, have access to his opinions, his worldview and insights. For any book detailing the more mundane aspects of life, a single voice is required, one which allows the writer to transform the banalities of normal life into something special, even beautiful (though they might not succeed). In this book, however, which is also exploring the dull existence of everyday life (the protagonist Martin in particular) we get a third person narration which just doesn't make sense to me. This isn't a sweeping epic looking at the lives of many characters across decades, it's a small peek into the life of a very ordinary man. Yes, he has some noteworthy experiences -- divorce, heart surgery, sudden death of a loved one -- but again, these are not extraordinary experiences, they're par for the course in most people's lives, dramatic but mundane, excellent fodder for someone writing about the tedium of normalcy. It doesn't make sense to attempt to make this into a page turning novel of gripping suspense and third party description. It needed one voice, preferably Martin's, to turn these normal moments into something poetic and profound. Anyway...

The set-up is very similar to Perfect Tense in that it deals with a man, another plodding office worker, who is ageing, looking back on his life, accepting the pitfalls of mortality, his broken relationships, the loss of his youth. It's all permeated with a nostalgic sadness and an unforgiving inevitability. A plot doesn't really exist, and again it's merely a man reminiscing, looking back, trying to find ways to look forward. But it just never grabbed me. It's nicely written but I found my attention wandering, and struggled to care about his ex-wife Marilyn, his ex-girlfriend Francesca, his daughter, his work colleagues. Again, I really feel like the book would have massively benefited from a more personal narration -- from Martin. I wanted to know what HE thought, not what the omniscient narrator passing through his life was casually describing. 

Bracewell has a neat touch when it comes to the mundane, a knack for recognising the petty trivialities of modern existence, all things which appeal to me, but this book felt slightly off. I couldn't entirely put my finger on why (beyond the choice of third person narration). But I still want to read more of his work. I think I might need to go back to his earlier ones. I definitely like his style and his preoccupation for the existential. But this one fell flat in the en.

 

5/10

 

 

Edited Sunday at 03:14 PM by Hux

[Hux]

Moravagine (1926) Blaise Cendrars

 

On paper I ought to have loved this. But for some reason, I just didn't care about any of it. I think this might be partly due to the fact that I've read three very similar books recently, with similar styles, themes, and characters. Interestingly, all three of these books (this, A Posthumous Confession by Emants, and Fog by de Unamuno) featured a chapter where the author inserted himself into the story as a character (which gives you a clue as to the kind of book you're reading). Additionally, I'm not entirely sure I'm a fan of picaresque novels that substitute any semblance of realism in favour of melodramatic adventure. But mostly I think it was a slight case of fatigue. I've read too many of these types of books recently and in quick succession.

This one starts with a psychiatrist (our narrator) working in a prison for the criminally insane. Here, he meets the titular character Moravagine, a nobleman with a history sexual violence and murder. At first glance, this appears to be the foundation of the book (and why I thought it might be fun) but as it goes along the narrative kind of leaves that salacious stuff behind (as a motivating theme at least) and instead turns into a travelogue and philosophical treatise. The narrator (Raymond) helps Moravagine escape and together they go on a global adventure, starting in Russia, back through Europe and England, across the Atlantic (this was one of the few chapters I enjoyed because it involved an Orangutan), around America, into South America, and back to Paris just in time for the invention of the aeroplane and the start of the First World War. As I was reading all this globe trotting stuff, I definitely felt a strong sense of Celine's Journey to The End of the Night and I can't imagine he wasn't partially influenced by this. Likewise, I suspect A Posthumous Confession by Emants (confessing to outlandish behaviours, social ineptitude, and general unpleasantness ) was, in turn, probably an influence on this. But I thought Emants writing was frankly more impressive. 

Anyway, this book is part derring-do adventure, part psychological exploration of madness, part misogynistic rant. The introduction to my copy does make a point of reminding the reader that Mort a vagine = death by vagina / death to vagina could be interpreted to mean birth inevitably leads to death or more specifically be a reference to his hatred for women. I don't know but it's not really that important because as I said at the start... I just didn't care for any of this. It was fine, it was plodding, a dark comedy that seemed to want to be more but which never quite got there. I wasn't bored but I wasn't enthralled either. I would definitely recommend it as a fun romp, a distraction, but, in truth, it never really excited me at any point, my experience of reading the book a somewhat meandering and uninspired event.  

Worth a look with some intriguing transgressive qualities but a little too goofy for my tastes.

 

6/10