A Book Blog 2026 by Books do Furnish a Room

[Books do furnish a room]

First review of the year

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

“Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets.”

This isn’t my first Pynchon. I loved Mason and Dixon and The Crying of Lot 49 was ok. This one was published in 1973 and concerns the Second World War and it’s aftermath. Of course, he’s produced another novel in the last year, which I may one day read as well!

Going into detail about the plot would take too long. Suffice to say that it focuses on (initially) the production and delivery of V2 rockets by the Germans towards the end of the war. It covers the period from late 1944 to September 1945. The plot is intricate and convoluted. There are many recurring characters, and Pynchon is quite inventive with names (one of the US navy’s ships is called the USS John E Badass: today that piece of satire is uncomfortably close to the truth). The novel goes into the science and engineering behind the rockets as well as their production and the search for the secrets behind them by the various allied powers after the war. Pynchon also uses low and high culture and there are lyrics to many popular songs, some of which are certainly made up. He captures the chaos on the continent after the collapse of Nazi Germany very well.

Pynchon does endeavour to shock at times and manages it rather well, although he does have a point to make. Despite all the chaos the rocket and its technology is in the hands of the state-corporatist powers and capitalism has weathered the storm. Pynchon is also interested in ecology and the natural world and is also it seems, a bit of a pessimist as he describes the western economic system:

“a system whose only aim is to violate the [natural] Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.”

The messiness of the novel just reflects that war is a messy business and the real losers are the ordinary citizens on both sides.

It’s a magnificent novel, all 902 pages of it and it is worth the hard work it takes to read it.

9 out of 10

Starting JR by William Gaddis

 

[Books do furnish a room]

The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

“What was joy, anyway. What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact. What did people who spoke of joy know of what it meant, to sleep and dream only of the whistle of planes and knocks at the door and on windows and to wake with a hand at one's throat— one's own hand, at one's own throat. What did they know of not speaking for days, of not having known the touch of another, never having known, of want and of not having felt the press of skin to one's own, and what did they know of a house that only ever emptied out. Of animals dying and fathers dying and mothers dying and finding bullet holes in the barks of trees right below hearts carved around names of people who weren't there and the bloody lip of a sibling and what did what did she know”

This won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2025 and was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. It is set in The Netherlands in 1961. The main protagonist is Isabel. She lives alone in the family home, although the home is tentatively owned by her elder brother. Isabel is lonely, obsessed with tidiness and order and apparently very self-enclosed. Essentially the novel tells the story of a period of time where Louis has to leave the country with his work and requests that his girlfriend, Eva, stay in the house: for about a month/six weeks.

It's the story of Isabel and Eva’s relationship and how it develops. As there is a queer element to this, it’s not too difficult to work out what happens. However, the novel is multi-layered and there are plenty of twists and turns. The aftermath of the war is a significant aspect part of the novel and the house itself is an important part of this. Much property belonging to the Jewish community was redistributed and that caused complications in later years. Family guilt and hidden scars are a factor. There is lots of hidden history. There are also themes of identity, power, control, class, the silence of queer desire, the risks and benefits of chaos. This is an exploration of human vulnerability and on the whole it works and the prose is good.

“What was joy, anyway? What was the worth of happiness that left behind a crater thrice the size of its impact.”

7and a half out of 10

Starting The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas