Ethan reads 2010

[ethan]

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

 

Benjamin Black (aka John Banville) continues his quirky Quirke mysteries. Very literary, full of atmosphere (50s Dublin), and depth of character. The mystery sometimes seems perfunctory, although Banville gives his full talent to genre fiction, there's no appearance of slumming. On the edges, a beautifully rendered depiction of a dysfunctional relationship between a father and his daughter.

 

 

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

 

The plot moves at pell mell speed. A boy and a girl experience traumatic childhood incidents. She becomes lame from a sking accident, he becomes a cutter, after leaving his mentally challenged twin sister alone in a park. The sister disappears without a trace. Gruesome heart rendering stuff. They become the only friends either of them ever know, but they never really connect. They are like prime numbers (divisible only by themselves or 1) 17 and 19 eg. with a small space of solitude between. I was hoping this novel would take me someplace. It never did.

 

 

Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano

 

Probably only for confirmed Bolano fans, this early short novel of 1930s Paris is nightmarish, even Kafkaesque. The shadow of Fascism looms large, connecting it to the later works.

 

 

Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream Vol2 by Javier Marias

 

I will wait until I read the final volume of this trilogy before making any in depth comments. Suffice it to say that Vol 2 blew me away, there are passages that are as aesthetically pleasing as any I have ever read. Just great literature!

[Kylie]

Thanks for the Benjamin Black review! I'm keen on reading these Quirke mysteries one day.

[ethan]

Kylie, make sure you start the Black mysteries with Christine Falls, in some respects it is a continuing plot.

[Kylie]

Will do, Ethan, thanks!

[ethan]

The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello

 

So many tedious characters! Plot-wise, very similiar to HG Wells' The History of Mr. Polly, which I read last month, but whereas Wells sees possibilities for re-invention, Pirandello sees no escape from a stifling world.

 

 

Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi

 

Skylark is the 35yo spinster daughter of a well-respected retired couple living in a beautifully evoked Hungarian (now Serbian) provincial capitol circa 1900. Mother and Father have withdrawn into a totally domestic lifestyle. Their world revolves around their unattractive daughter, with no prospects, who they love dearly, she is their cook, their maid, their friend, all functions she performs with cheerfulness, she loves her parents just as dearly.

 

Skylark goes to visit her Uncle for a week, to get a rest, her parents left alone to fend for themselves for the first time in decades. Ironically, Mother and Father re-discover life in her absence, go to the theater, re-connect with old friends, experience what they've been missing in their complex community by their self-imposed solitude.

 

Skylark returns, she's been off-stage since the opening chapters, normal life returns. In the final pages we get a devastating glimpse beneath her cheerful facade, as she faces yet another long dark night of her soul.

 

A wonderful novel, full of compassion and humanity, highly recommended.

 

 

.

Edited May 22, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey

 

A noir-ish art forgery story, with laughs. I found this novel sketchy, bordering on insubstantial, and the art theft contrivances too convoluted, or too un-compelling to follow. What's left is the love story, really more adolescent infatuation, or pure lust, than grown-up love. Do male novelists have a tendency to create fantasty female characters? I have a feeling Carey may have conjured up (filched?) his unbelievable femme fatale after watching an all day Law and Order marathon. I may have been put-off by this novel early on, when Carey, with great haste, kills off a puppy, a cardinal sin in my reading theocracy. It caused me to suspect he'd do the same with the shaggy-dog sidekick, but thankfully my fear was unfounded.

 

 

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

 

Do female novelists have a tendency to create fantasy male characters? Hazzard's hero is a brave WWII vet abroad in early postwar (1947) Asia, a very brave man with medals, and stories upon stories of bravado, to prove it. It's tough to find a chink in the armor. Well, he does fall in love with a teen-age girl (he's in his thirties) but their love is so chaste and transcendent, it makes him appear even nobler. That such an old-fashioned novel could be published in this decade! It reminded me most of Somerset Maugham on a wordy day. Great intensity of description, highly formalized dialogue, pervasive death and disease. Will our Knight find enough remaining courage, in this gloomy landscape, to rescue his damsel-in-distress? I was surprised to find myself caring whether he did or not. It's quite suspenseful.

[ethan]

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larrson

 

Larsson's storytelling abilities really get better as the trilogy goes along. Only a couple of narrative bumps, but even they result in suspenseful payoffs. Even the translation feels smoother. Lisabeth lays in a hospital bed, for the most part, while investigation upon investigation swirl around her, characters spying on spies who are spying on them, it is indeed a hornet's nest, it reaches all the way to the PM. A real juggling act by the author, he keeps it flowing and plausible.

 

Larsson created one of the great superstars of crime fiction in Lisabeth Salander. She represents all the violence men inflict on women, she's the deadly angel of retribution, indestructible, ethereal, a moody gothic pixie. Larsson kind of holds her back until the last 100 pages, he understands the compelling power of his creation, then he lets her loose, for a cinematically vivid, grim fairy tale ending of mythic proportions.

 

Such a satisfying conclusion to a long, often mesmerising trilogy!

[ethan]

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

 

Rich and addictive prose, the story of two adolescent sisters abandoned by mother and father, tended to by grandmother, and then by a very odd Aunt, in a remote backwater of northern Idaho. Like much great literature, it can be read from a variety of viewpoints: chick-lit (no males until a pesky sherriff intrudes), a feminist empowerment tale, a biblical allegory, an illustration of Emerson's Transcendentalism, a meditation on Bartleby's mournful cosmic "NO". The first line - "My name is Ruth" ("Call me Ishmael") conjures up Melville, and he pops up again and again, a worthy apparition. Highly recommended.

 

 

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra

 

Slight novella from Chile, where it is very popular. Young lovers, grown apart, the girl eventually dies, after a long separation, in a foreign city. We're told this in the first paragraph, this is more of a haunting, lyrical and doomed, you can read it in an hour.

 

 

Jerusalem by Goncalo Tavares

 

Tragedies converge in an unnamed city, of characters with damaged souls, minds and bodies. A Portuguese novel, part of a series the author calls "The Kingdom". Lots of biblical references here, too. Although a novel of unique intensity, I'm not clear on the author's intentions, it seems to be a search for the grace of God, but I could be wrong. Sometimes I think I need to take a course on perception enhancement.

 

 

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker

 

A Dutch tale of a middle-aged farmer who never learned how to live, shadowed by his missing twin, killed in an auto accident while still a teenager. Too much inner turmoil for this reader to absorb. Still, this novel has recently won a rich and prestigious award. I'll concede the description of changing seasons and the stark beauty of farm life are effectively drawn, and compelling.

 

 

The Black Minutes by Martin Solares

 

A Mexican police procedural. A serial killer is sought, the same one, in two different eras, twenty years apart. Endemic and pervasive corruption impede the search. Two valiant cops buck the tide, it's a familiar story, but the local color details and the tough guy dialogue make it worth the effort. B. Traven and Alfred Hitchcock appear in brief, amusing cameos.

 

Coming soon.....

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

Ghosts by Cesar Aira

Your Face Tomorrow Vol 3 by Javier Marias

Edited June 19, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

Ghosts by Cesar Aira

 

New Years Eve in Buenos Aires. A new apartment building, near completion, plays host to the prospective tenants, eager to move in, the Chilean workers eager to celebrate, the nervous architect, the caretaker and his family who live on the top floor, preparing the night's feast, and a whole panoply of ghosts- naked men covered in white powder, floating through the walls, most everyone sees them, they're no big deal. The story meanders about, it's like a kaleidoscope, no direction, finally centering on the caretakers teen-age step-daughter. The tragic ending struck me as jaw droppingly unearned, but perhaps I need to read more from Aira to have some semblance of his intentions.

 

 

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh

 

The Noel Cowardish dialogue is amusingly dated, hard to believe people in any age talked to each other so affectedly. Waugh, before his conversion to Catholicism, pictures a bleak world. A seemingly happy wife engages in a heartless adultery, though there may not be any other kind, her husband is dumbfounded. The situation is autobiographical and Waugh has a honed axe to grind. The ending is clever if glib, a rehashing of an earlier short story, there's an alternate happy ending that was used in the US, sentimental Americans can't abide such darkness. Some beautiful passages, and a very entertaining read.

 

Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow and Farewell Vol3 by Javier Marias

 

It's indescribable, but I'll give it a try. The modern world in 1000 pages; a tribute to the WWII generation, their bravery in standing up, unflinchingly, to evil, what it cost them, how much we owe them; the Spanish Civil War as metaphor for betrayal, friendships today, enemies tomorrow; deciphering the codes of human behavior, how will I act when faced with moral dilemmas, how will I find your face tomorrow, what did I miss, why didn't I know, what am I capable of, what did I cause. Part spy story, part achingly believable love story, totally unique, compulsively readable once you catch the musical cadences. I hated to see it end.

 

 

Coming soon.......

The Babes in the Woods by Ruth Rendell

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

The Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

[ethan]

The Babes in the Wood by Ruth Rendell

 

Two children disappear from their home, along with their babysitter, without a trace. Inspector Wexford is stymied, he's also dealing with a flood upon the land, endless rain, and a daughter who finds she's attached herself to a violent abuser. This novel is really more interesting as social portrait than mystery, covering the pitfalls of marraige, the dangers of religious fanaticism, the often impenetrable chasm between parents and their children.

 

 

Purge by Sofi Oksanen

 

Oksanen is quite a literary sensation in her native Finland and this her first to be translated into English. Purge is set in Estonia, from the times of Soviet occupation to modern day freedom, of a sort. More or less a thriller, it's a story of women besieged, first by Communist gangsters, then later by capitalist gangsters, and at the center a non-descript old lady, a mini-Stalin, with her own private internment camp, meting out justice as she sees fit, in a grossly mixed-up and cruel world. Good populist literature with a couple of memorable characters, but also a gallery of stock characters, and some overly familiar genre conventions.

 

 

The Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann

 

So whats a sixty something male doing, reading a bildungsroman of a girl's painful process of growing up on Long Island circa late 70s? Sometimes I'm too curious a reader for my own good. Not here though, but it was at times a tough slog. Self published a few years ago, much admired, professionally re-edited, and one of Amazon's June recommendations. And I liked the title.

 

This isn't chick-lit, I don't think, it's very ambitious, perhaps too much so. The beginning is peppered with awkward adjectives and jump off the page similies. But it is so heartful, sincere and unapologetically romantic. There is a funeral scene towards the end as affecting as any I've read, as family and friends attempt to come to terms with the suicide of a young man lost to addiction, with some surprisingly profound perspective. And a romance so transcendent (some might say naive) in its presentation, a human body needing another specific human body to complete itself, a perfect complement, life will never be what it should be without its presence, applying to a precious moment in a person's life, when everything seems to matter, of course this moment cannot last, the darkness and the light eventually converge, and we live the rest of our lives in its wake, of compromise and maturity.

 

Lyrics of familiar songs abound, music a touchstone. One song, Suzanne by Leonard Cohen conjured up memories of constant replays I experienced myself as a young romantic. Yet again, I can't get the song out of my head. If you like Suzanne, I'd wager you'd like this novel. I'll offer up its last verse........

 

 

Now Suzanne takes your hand

And she leads you to the river

She is wearing rags and feathers

From Salvation Army counters

And the sun pours down like honey

On our lady of the harbour

And she shows you where to look

Among the garbage and the flowers

There are heroes in the seaweed

There are children in the morning

They are leaning out for love

And they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror

 

And you want to travel with her

And you want to travel blind

And you know that you can trust her

For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

 

 

Coming soon.......

Amulet by Roberto Bolano

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano

Witz by Joshua Cohen

Edited July 11, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

Consequences by Penelope Lively

 

A young woman sits on a park bench in 1930s London, crying. A young man, a stranger, sits close by, sketching ducks. He looks up at the crying woman, their eyes meet, and something wonderful happens. Thus begins this multi-generational novel, describing the consequences of that chance meeting. Much ground is covered in only 250 pages, it moves swiftly, right up to the new millenium. Everyone is properly decent, well-behaved, leading to a paucity of dramatic conflict. Daughter and granddaughter find love, have losses, and adjust to time's relentless march. Some beautiful prose atones for the hurried plotting.

 

 

Amulet by Roberto Bolano

 

Bolano takes on the narrative voice of a woman, one Auxilio Lacouture, the "Mother of Mexican Poetry". In 1968 the Mexican army invades the capitol's university. Auxilio is in the ladies room at the onset, her presence undetected by the invaders, she decides to remain in hiding, without food, as a protest, for many days, and thereby becoming a heroine to the young protesters when the soldiers finally leave. This novel meanders through Auxilio's memory of that event, and what was to come for the romantic generation that had so much promise, frittered away by disappointment and self-interest. Bolano loved to describe his character's dreams and visions, and this novel ends with one of his best, hordes of young students marching together through a glorious landscape, singing the Amulet of the title, heading for some barely glimpsed but very real abyss.

 

 

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

 

The Peruvian novelist Vargas Llosa described his experience of reading Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy as "being demolished by the cyclonic force of story". I like that, it aptly describes my experience of the trilogy, and also of Jackson's phenomenally eerie and quite insane Castle. I'll not describe the plot, in fear of compromising any enjoyment for those who haven't read it, just go ahead and read it, it's short, hypnotic, and haunting.

 

 

.

Edited July 24, 2010 by ethan

[Ben]

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larrson (Kindle)

 

The trilogy has taken off in the USA, highly unusual for a translated work. The grimmest of grim fairy tales, notable for a pronounced outrage at the violence men inflict on women. Some clunky prose redeemed by a great last 100 pages full of action. The real suspense is whether the emotionally dead goth heroine will be able to find the courage to love another, or at least find a man she can trust.

 

I just read this in your initial post and thought to myself that it deserved more credit than that - it was a novel I thoroughly enjoyed. However, then I read your most recent comments on the third in the trilogy, and I am delighted that it picks up through to the conclusion. I'm 2/3's of the way through the second, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as we speak, and I can't wait to fly on through to the finale.

[ethan]

I'm 2/3's of the way through the second, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo as we speak, and I can't wait to fly on through to the finale.

 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first in the series, Played With Fire the second. It's a great reading experience, any which way you slice it.

 

.

[Ben]

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first in the series, Played With Fire the second. It's a great reading experience, any which way you slice it.

 

.

 

Forgive me, I did indeed mean Playing With Fire . Either way, like you said, it's great stuff.

[ethan]

Faithful Place by Tana French

 

Frank Mackey, undercover cop guru in French's previous novel The Likeness, takes center stage in her new thriller, a story of a boy and a girl in love, trying to escape from the prison of their drab, hopeless Dublin childhoods, and from their highly dysfunctional families, eloping to London on the midnight boat. Only the girl, Rosie, never shows, disappears without a trace. Twenty years later her suitcase is found, and Frank gets sucked back into the ashes of his memories, to finally solve the mystery that has haunted his life. French has quickly joined the first rank of suspense writers, her stories tinged with emotional truth, exploring the fragility of the ties that bind us to others, especially to those with whom we are closest.

 

 

Stoner by John Williams

 

This novel from the 1960s (having nothing to do with drugs) got a recent boost when Tom Hanks proclaimed it one of his all-time favorites. I tip my hat to Hanks' literary taste, for this is indeed a remarkable book, telling the life story of an ordinary man who falls in love with literature and teaching, but whose life, in every other aspect - marraige, professional, fatherhood - is littered with disappointment. Williams views this man as a hero for his loyalty, integrity, his perserverance against the odds of poor fortune, and his ability to still find meaning in his singular enthusiasm. All the characters and scenes are described perfectly in crystal clear prose. Williams only wrote two other novels (Augustus about Ancient Rome, and Butcher's Crossing on the Old West) and I'm eager to get to them.

 

 

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

 

Set in a fictional LA seaside community circa 1970, Pynchon's latest has lots to do with drugs, and sex, and rock-n-roll, and a counter culture reeling from the Manson murders, Tricky Dick in the White House, Ronald Reagan in the Governor's mansion, and the Silent Majority on the rise. It's been termed "Pynchon lite" by the pundits, a detective story sticking close to the genre conventions, it's short, accessible, but still covers all the themes that have obsessed Pynchon these many years. I found it hilarious, and quite moving, an elegy for a lost moment when so much seemed possible. But then, I'm like a total fan of the man from way back, you might not want to trust my opinion.

 

 

coming soon....

The Last Samurai by Helen De Witt (nothing to do with the Tom Cruise movie)

The Three Fates by Linda Le

The Tanners by Robert Walser

and, maybe, someday, the 800pg Witz by Joshua Cohen, 60% through, the ultimate homework assignment.

 

.

Edited August 11, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt

 

An intriguing premise - single Mom with brilliant son, she home schools him, he learns 20 languages by age 11, studies physics, philosophy, mathematics, judo. Mom worries that he has no male figures to emulate, so she shows him Akira Kurosawa's movie The Seven Samurai over and over, thinking that it properly displays the manly virtues of loyalty, bravery and self-sacrifice. The problem is that the son wishes to know the identity of his father (a one-night stand for Mom) but she's not telling. The last section of the novel covers the boy's Samurai-like quest for his father, or more telling, who he wishes his father would be.

 

There are some deep philosophical questions raised along the way, some I'm far too dense to properly identify, but one dilemma I found interesting was the value of isolation in endless knowledge, versus the value of engagement with the world around you. This is not a difficult read, I found it highly entertaining, with some memorable characters.

 

 

The Three Fates by Linda Le

 

Another interesting premise - three Vietamese girls, living in Paris (their grandmother whisked them away during the fall of Saigon) anticipate the arrival of their Father, who they haven't seen since, from Vietnam. Unfortunately, this short novel is told in extended metaphors, the main one being King Lear and his three daughters, but there are many more, all tinged with bitterness, and it soon becomes a tedious slog.

 

 

Witz by Joshua Cohen

 

Cohen is prodigiously talented, and that is nothing to be sniffed at. But he wishes to display it in every paragraph, sentence and phrase. He smothers you, and the plot, in his virtuosity. By the end I felt I was reading gibberish. Some people hail this book as a masterpiece, I found it exhausting and impenetrable.

 

 

coming soon......

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Edited August 21, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowden

 

A teenage girl, Portia, recently orphaned, comes to live with her half-brother and his lovely, but jaded wife in 30s London. Portia has lived a peripatetic, but very happy life with her parents in southern France, but must now adjust to the cynical machinations of big city life and adult society. She does not adjust well. By modern standards, and, indeed, even the standards of her times, Portia is a bit dense. She trusts her heart, so you care about her, but sometimes you might feel like giving her a swift kick. Luckily, the brilliance of this novel is not so much in the theme as in the details - precisely defined characters, compelling scenes of dialogue, and a vivid sense of place. And Portia is a true original, whether you enjoy the novel or not depends a great deal on how much sympathy she can elicit from you.

 

 

The Tanners by Robert Walser

 

Simon, in his early 20s, continously moves from menial job to a more menial job, from one seedy hotel to another, from picturesque country villages to lakeside cities in early 20th century Switzerland. He's sort of a good-natured Bartleby, he proclaims a resounding NO to the conventions and expectations of society, but he loves so many of the trappings of being alive - the exuberance of a long walk on a beautiful day; appreciating the ethereal power of the opposite sex; forming deep friendships (that never abide); studying the interesting panoply of people parading by on the boulevard of a lazy Sunday afternoon.

 

Simon's many job interviews are a hoot. He waxes poetic, with evident sincerity, on his impeccable qualifications and his overwhelming desire to perform the most mundane duties for his prospective employer. Invariably the employer is so taken back by Simon's over-the-top performance he gives him a shot. In two weeks time, Simon will be gone, disillusioned, he feels he deserves something better than this meaningless waste of time. Underneath the light airy prose and the quixotic ramblings lies a distinct foreboding of never belonging anywhere, being of the world but never quite in it. The novel is highly auto-biographical, Walser led such a life, he became a minor literary sensation in Berlin while young, then disappeared from sight, discovered decades later in a mental asylum, he spent the final thirty years of his life there, though no one ever considered him the least bit insane. He had found his refuge.

 

 

 

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano

 

One of Bolano's shorter works, not quite up to the high standard set by Distant Star and By Night in Chile, but still mighty good. A social portrait of a seaside Spanish town during a touristy summer. An ice skating rink is surreptiously erected by a town official with embezzled township funds so that the local figure skating star, her career in decline, can practice for a comeback. The town official is of course hopelessly in love with the skater. There's a murder committed, in the center of the rink, with an eerily beautiful description of the slender rivers of blood flowing across the ice. Mostly the novel is about lost souls haunted by their dashed dreams, trying to find some peace, Bolano's sustaining theme.

 

 

A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read

 

A thriller recommended by Tana French, no less, one of my faves. I can't figure out why the recommendation, as this novel is packed with everything Tana's books aren't- cliches, smarminess, cardboard characters, limpid prose. I didn't even get any thrills.

 

 

still coming soon..........

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (surprisingly, I'm not enjoying this so far)

Edited September 26, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

 

Franzen is a writer of talent, scope and ambition and I found Freedom surprisingly old-fashioned in its realism, and in its willingness to engage with a mainstream audience. (I haven't read The Corrections and knew little about Franzen outside of the Oprah brouhaha.) This is a family saga starring Walter and Patty Berglund who are described and analyzed every which way, and then some. We follow their stormy marraige from college days to retirement. Whether you like the book or not hinges mightily on whether you find them endearingly human, or shallow and annoyingly self-absorbed. It's also a love triangle, for it seems that Patty has another life-long paramour, Richard, an unreliable on-the-fringes rock star, who also happens to be Walter's best friend.

 

Although an engrossing read, I was far too often reminded of daytime soaps, reality TV and internet porn (the sex scenes are a hoot). Franzen says he isn't writing for the ages, and there's a surfeit of contemporary references and "the way we live now" relationships. The action moves along, Franzen is never boring, and many of the minor characters are spot-on in their likeness to type. I just wasn't very clear on what Franzen was trying to say, the themes seemed confused, but then that may be the theme, that the end result of our personal freedom is often confusion, and too often anger and despair.

 

 

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy

 

This is Tolstoy's last novel, really closer to a novella at only 140 pages, that he spent the last ten years of his life composing. Murad was a legendary Chechnayan warrior who defects to the Russians (Tolstoy as a young soldier shook his hand) and then is caught in a tug of war with his former leader who has imprisoned his family. The novel covers alot of ground and many characters for so brief a length. Whereas Franzen huffs and puffs for over 500 pages to try and make his main characters clear and understandable, Tolstoy in a few paragraphs creates indelible portraits of precision and poignancy. It's about as sublime as fiction gets.

 

 

 

coming soon.......

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

The Mountain Lion by Jean Stafford

The Jokers by Albert Cossery

Edited October 24, 2010 by ethan

[Mac]

I have The Last Samurai on my TBR mountain and will now bump it up to the top. Great reviews, Ethan. Thanks for posting 'em!

[ethan]

It's been awhile.............

 

 

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead

 

Stead's 1940 autobiographical novel about her bizarre childhood (highly touted by Jonathan Franzen on his Freedom book tour) is at turns hilarious, scary and ultimately tragic. A Father who lorded over his many children, narcissistic, occasionally benevolent but mostly oppressive. A description of a marital battlefield whose arguments make those of George and Martha's in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf seem tame. Stead was once a perennial Nobel possibility, and kudos to Franzen for drawing attention to this largely forgotten but very remarkable novelist.

 

 

The Jokers by Albert Cossery

 

The irony in this comic novel of a group of anarchists who bring down their bumbling governor by lodging a campaign of overpraising him, drips off of every page. Unfortunately, Cossery's misogyny is barely muted and it leaves a sour taste.

 

 

Elegy For April by Benjamin Black

 

The third and least of the Quirke mysteries, perfunctory and rather worn out, with a yucky incest theme. The first novel in the series, Christine Falls, is the one to read, and, hopefully, if he continues with the series, he returns to the more expansive world of that novel.

 

 

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym

 

Middle aged spinster 1950s, churchgoer, sympathetic confidante to those with problems, in her spare time looks after elderly women with no means, heavily involved in the good works at her church - this is Pym's (or maybe society's) definition of an excellent woman. Nothing much happens, the meaning is in the details, this engrossing comedy of manners struck me as well above average.

 

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

 

One of the most entertaining novels I've read this year, this time it's the English high society being skewered, between the two World Wars. Simply great characterizations of a world Mitford knew well, and if you are familiar with the Mitford family history (what a history!) you'll enjoy it even more.

 

The Ambassadors by Henry James

 

The first of James' long novels (his personal favorite) I've ever been able to complete. The first half was a real struggle, I resorted to reading difficult passages aloud as I believe James dictated these later novels, and that helped. I zoomed through the second half, underneath all the erudition and the artificial and theatrical world he creates, lies a master storyteller, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time the last few days pondering the fate of his fictional characters.

Edited December 11, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

A year end wrapup........

 

I'll save the last couple of books I'll finish by New Years for my 2011 blog.

 

The novels I got the most out of in 2010, in chronological order as I read them......

 

That Awful Mess on the Via Merluna by Carlos Emilio Gadda

Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano

As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo

Your Face Tomorrow (trilogy) by Javier Marias

 

Skylark by Deszo Kosztolanyi

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Stoner by John Williams

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy

The Ambassadors by Henry James

 

If I had to pick just one it would probably be Alien Hearts, a beautiful and poignant exploration of the human condition we term romantic love, delivered in a seamless and highly poetic translation. A couple I found difficult - The Ambassadors and That Awful Mess.. - I think it is important to exercise one's reader's chops from time to time on a challenge, as often, and especially in these two novels, it can be deeply rewarding.

 

And then there are the novels of whose ultimate literary value I may have been uncertain, but didn't really care, as I found them such enjoyable reads..........

 

The Likeness by Tana French

The Girl Who Played With Fire/The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon (my favorite read of the year)

 

And, I still love my Kindle, highly recommended.

 

For 2011, I'm kicking around some reading goals. Top of the list as of now is Anthony Powell's 12 volume A Dance to the Music of Time, reading one volume per month.

Edited December 18, 2010 by ethan

[ethan]

A chronological list of the novels I read in 2010 with some ratings thrown in........

 

Lush Life by Richard Price ***

Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard by Georges Simenon **

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larrson ***

The Secret Scripture by Sebastien Barry ***

A Person of Interest by Susan Choi **

 

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann **

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters ***

Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo ***

Distant Star by Roberto Bolano ****

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon ***

 

The Likeness by Tana French ***

That Awful Mess on the Via Merluna by Carlos Emilio Gadda *****

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen *

Alien Hearts by Guy de Maupassant *****

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk ***

 

By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolano *****

A Gate at the Stairs by Laurie Moore ***

Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia ****

The Echo Maker by Richard Powers ***

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolano ***

 

Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd ***

The Darkest Room by Johann Theorin **

A Dark Matter by Peter Straub *

The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Derek Palmer ***

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster ***

 

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson ***

Your Face Tomorrow Vol 1 Fever and Spear by Javier Marias ****

The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller ***

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte ***

Written in Bone by Simon Beckett **

 

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K Dick ****

Sleepless by Charlie Huston ***

As a Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo *****

The Confessions of Noa Weber by Gail Hareven **

The History of Mr. Polly by H.G. Wells ****

 

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black ***

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano **

Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream Vol 2 by Javier Marias *****

Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano ***

The Late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello ***

 

Skylark by Dezso Kosztolanyi *****

Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey **

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard ****

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson ****

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker **

 

The Black Minutes by Martin Solares **

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson *****

Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra ***

Jerusalem by Goncalo M. Tavares ***

A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh ****

 

Ghosts by Cesar Aira **

Your Face Tomorrow: Poison, Shadow and Farewell Vol3 by Javier Marias *****

The Babes in the Wood by Ruth Rendell ***

Purge by Sofi Oksanen ***

Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann **

 

Amulet by Roberto Bolano ***

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson ****

Consequences by Penelope Lively ***

Faithful Place by Tana French ****

Stoner by John Williams *****

 

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon ****

The Three Fates by Linda Le **

Witz by Joshua Cohen **

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt ****

A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read *

 

The Tanners by Robert Walser ****

The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen ****

The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolano ***

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen ***

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy *****

 

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead ****

The Jokers by Albert Cossery ***

Elegy For April by Benjamin Black **

Excellent Women by Barbara Pym ****

Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford ****

 

The Ambassadors by Henry James *****

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick ***

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith ****

Sunflower by Gyula Krudy ****