Fiction

Review: THE RADLEYS by Matt Haig (Canongate Books)

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HaigM-RadleysAn unconventional, intelligent vampire novel

Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and have – for seventeen years – been abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their children could live normal lives.

One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking – and disturbingly satisfying – act of violence, and her parents are forced to explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara’s trail, he winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys’ marriage.

I really enjoyed this. I also read it quite a while ago, which is why I’m going to keep the review rather brief. It’s a different and original take on vampires – one that blends commentary on contemporary British society, middle-class life and anxieties, and is presented with a deft, light touch. Continue reading →

“Nate in Venice” by Richard Russo (Kindle Single)

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RussoR-NateInVeniceA short story from Pulitzer-prize winning author of Empire Falls

After a tragic incident with a student, Nate, a professor at a small New England college, retires from teaching and from life. He ends his self-imposed exile with a tour-group trip to Venice in the company of his overbearing, mostly estranged brother. Nate is unsure he’s equipped for the challenges of human contact, especially the fraternal kind. He tries to play along, keep up, mixing his antidepressants with expensive Chianti, but while navigating the labyrinthine streets of the ancient, sinking city, the past greets him around every corner, even in his dreams: There’s the stricken face of the young woman whose life he may have ruined, and there’s Julian, the older brother who has always derided and discounted him. Is Nate sunk? Is the trip, the chance to fall in love — in fact, his whole existence — merely water under the ponte?

This is only the second thing by Russo that I’ve read. I recently also read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Straight Man, which I hope to review at some point in the near future. I have also acquired his Pulitzer-prize-winning Empire Falls, which is very high on my TBR mountain. When this popped up on Amazon UK’s Kindle Singles page, I thought it would be a great, quick read to fill in a gap between full-length novels. I was not wrong.

The story follows Nate, who has come on this trip with his estranged brother. He is getting on in years, and has fled a strange event related to a student back home. As he tries to figure out why his brother is giving him such a hard time, while also considering his fellow travellers, we get to know what happened to him back home. As it turns out, it’s probably not what you were thinking. I thought it was a real good change from the norm, too. Interesting characters, a quick, engaging plot. What more can one want from a short story? This is, overall, a really well-written bit of fiction, very much focused on the characters.

What drew me to the story was not just because I enjoyed Russo’s novel – although, they do share some elements. I am really drawn to fiction set in or connected with universities. In this case, the protagonist is a professor, and as such the story contains some interesting (and familiar to me) commentary on universities and teaching. For no other reason than they interested me, and because I’ve experienced similar things as both a student and teaching assistant, here are a couple of examples.

First up, that somewhat depressing moment of marking the first round of essays for a class:

“… that first batch of essays was depressingly dismal. Their authors were not stupid — the lively classroom discussions had proved that much — but the writing they produced was breathtakingly incoherent. All their academic lives, they’d been cutting and pasting from the Internet — a phrase here, a sentence there—creating a pastiche of observations linked by little more than general subject matter. Individual sentences, lifted from their original context and plopped down in a foreign one, varied wildly in tone and style. Given a list of transitional phrases — but, rather, on the other hand, while, hence — the essay’s alleged authors would’ve been helpless to choose the one that correctly expressed the relationship between juxtaposed assertions, had such a relationship by chance occurred. Whole paragraphs were maddeningly free of both mistakes and meaning.”

The awkwardness of essay hand-back sessions, when hitherto spoon-fed and pampered students, not as brilliant as their parents have no doubt always told them, realise that completing the assignment is not enough to get an A…

“Handing back student essays, especially the first batch, was invariably an unpleasant duty, marking as it did the end of the academic honeymoon. Here they’d all been getting along so well, pretending to be the best of friends, and now this. A grade. Having briefly imagined that this class would be different, they now understood it wasn’t. Betrayed again.”

And the frustrating reality of students not realising that clarity is oh-so-very-important.

“… students, even the English majors, were content for their meaning to loiter in the shadows of their murky prose, as if clarity were a shared responsibility between writer and reader. His prose workshops flew in the face of their unshakable conviction that the essays they turned in were a private matter between them and him, sort of like therapy or confession.”

Anyway, back to the review. This is a short, well-written and well-constructed short story. Nate in Venice is a great introduction to Russo’s writing and style, and was a very enjoyable read. Very much recommended.

“The Library of Unrequited Love” by Sophie Divry & Siân Reynolds (trans.) (MacLehose Press)

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Divry-TheLibraryOfUnrequitedLoveA peculiar, endearing little book

One morning a librarian finds a reader who has been locked in overnight.

She starts to talk to him, a one-way conversation that soon gathers pace as an outpouring of frustrations, observations and anguishes. Two things shine through: her shy, unrequited passion for a quiet researcher named Martin, and an ardent and absolute love of books.

A delightful flight of fancy for the lonely bookworm in all of us…

What a peculiar little book. The Library of Unrequited Love is a 98-page, stream-of-consciousness, single-paragraph monologue. Ordinarily, such a description would be an automatic turn-off for me. This, however, was a very endearing read.

Someone has been locked in a library over-night, and in the morning an old librarian finds him as she prepares to open up. Rather strangely, instead of being particularly concerned, the librarian goes on a great, long, free-form ramble that covers a broad-range of topic – from libraries, books, librarians-vs.-readers, society, and, of course, Martin (who has attracted her eye and is the emerges-late-in-the-story focus of the title).

Given its extremely brief length, it’s difficult to know how to approach it for a review. Reynolds has done a great job with the translation, and there’s a great flow to the narrative. We really get a sense of the librarian’s character, her biases and tastes. There’s a wealth of information and great commentary, too – especially on the subject of libraries. Here are just a couple of nuggets.

First, a thought on the strange people they attract, but also why they’re important in the Summer:

“… libraries do attract mad people. Especially in summer. Of course, if you closed the libraries during the summer holidays, you wouldn’t see them. No more lunatics, poor people, children on their own, students who’ve failed their exams, no more little old chaps, no more culture and no more humanity. When I think that some mayors dare to close their libraries in August. Just to cut down on costs. Barbaric. Think of it: when the town’s sweltering in the heat, the shops are all shut, the swimming baths are full, people’s purses are empty, their pay’s too low, and they’re brooding over their problems in the shade, with the tar melting on the road, the house of culture could be opening its arms to all those children lost in an ocean of urban idiocy, but no, his nibs the Mayor has closed the library … What’s the little old pensioner going to do in August? I’ll tell you: he gets up on Tuesday morning, he takes the only bus of the day, and he toddles along slowly to the entrance of the library, because for twenty-four hours he’s been looking forward to a nice long day spent in an air-conditioned reading room, leafing through his favourite newspapers, and then like a stab in the back, or Napoleon’s coup d’etat, my poor little pensioner sees the criminal notice on the door: Closed until September … Nothing is sadder than an empty library.”

And also this amusing interpretation of the never-ending war that takes place in a library:

“I’ll tell you how it works. The library is the arena where every day the Homeric battle begins between books and readers. In this struggle, the librarians are the referees. In this arena, they have a part to play. Either they’re cowards and take the side of the mountain of books, or they bravely help the worried reader. And in this fight, you have to let your conscience be your guide. But librarians aren’t automatically on the side of the humans, don’t be fooled. You don’t realize, but you’re a flock of sheep in our hands, you think you’re gambolling about free as air, but there are wolves everywhere lying in wait for you, cyclops, sirens, naked nymphs, oh, the pity of it … A barricade only has two sides and I know which side I’m on, comrade. I’m here to help the poor, depressed, thirsty reader faced with the crushing prestige of the Army of Books.”

Overall, then, I would strongly recommend this to anyone who was brought up visiting libraries and thinks of them fondly, any bibliophile, and also anyone who has a couple of hours to fill and doesn’t want to dive in to a new full-length novel quite yet.

A peculiar, endearing, very well-written novella. Definitely recommended.

Guest Post: “Tower of Babel” by Aidan Harte

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AidanHarte-AuthorPicMasons, like writers, learn the hard way to choose their foundation carefully. The strength of that first stone defines the structure, sets the tone. Accordingly, Chapter One of Spira Mirabilis begins with blasphemy. The Last Apprentice of Concord whips up a Children’s Crusade and instead of sending them to fight the approaching coalition led by Contessa Scaligeri, he sets them to construct a new cathedral. This is a recreation of the Tower of Babel, that structure torn down by an outraged God who then “confounded the language of all the Earth,” for good measure.

Finishing The Wave Trilogy, I found myself toiling in Babel’s shadow. This influence can be partly ascribed to the setting – cathedral building was medieval society’s engine, the focus of mathematics, engineering, art and devotion – but what troubled me was what Nimrod’s Tower says about creation. It condemns all creation as a blasphemous encroachment. What more damning indictment of the hubris of storytelling than a tower reaching to heaven, swatted aside by the greatest creator of all? The Middle East’s attitude to idolaters has always swayed between hostility and ambivalence. No accident then that Scheherazade, like Babel, springs from the fertile soil between the Euphrates and the Tigres. The lovely slave girl forever spinning yarns to keep her head from tumbling is, I like to think, the patron saint of storytelling. Her story reveals the secret of all stories: once you get in the habit of it, it’s easier to keep going than to stop.

HarteA-WaveTrilogy2014

There’s always a new twist, a cliff-hanger to escape, a long lost uncle to appear, a reconciliation or – better yet – a quarrel to be had. The deeper one is immersed, the more improbabilities one will accept. Watch the end of any Hitchcock film; it will seem overwrought, even silly, but only because you haven’t earned the heightened emotions the last act demands. Plenty of wonderful stories, like political careers, simply capsize before the finish line. The final season of The Wire is a catastrophe, but it seems churlish to say so. Instead we echo the builders of Babel: ‘Shame how it ended, but wasn’t she splendid?’

It’s a bittersweet thing to leave a place you’ve lived in for years but I’m finally saying addio to Etruria. No matter how much we rehearse farewells, they are almost always anticlimactic. Only a committed Austinian can recall the last lines of Pride and Prejudice:

“With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”

I know – yawnsville, right? Dear Jane is simply putting the chairs away and turning out the lights, but we’ve enjoyed the evening’s entertainment so much that we can’t complain if it ends in diminuendo. First impressions matter. Endings? Not so much. That last Parthian shot won’t mar a wonderful story or salvage a dull one. The battle’s won or lost long before then. Famous farewells, then, are necessarily a rare species. There’s Gatsby with his green light and boat going nowhere and Sydney Carton doing that far, far better thing. My favourite comes from Tracy Chevalier’s The Girl with the Pearl Earring. ‘A maid comes free’ is the final bittersweet flourish which makes this poignant tale linger.

Parting pickings are slim because it is a truth universally concealed that most writers are too preoccupied leaving the stage with dignity to craft something beautiful. But endings should be fashioned as carefully as the keystone that completes the arch, and not afterthoughts. Readers are well used to preposterous final acts when the air suddenly escapes. The sound of that rushing air is usually a Calvary horn. When it toots, it’s time to get your coat. The technical term is Deus Ex Machina, or God from the Machine. The phrase, as every eager Lit Grad know, originates in Greek theater when Zeus or one of his progeny would drop down and resolve things with a thunderbolt.

In Spira Mirabilis I throw a spanner in the divine machinery, asking what if God wants to help, but is powerless. I posit that God was not merely offended by Nimrod’s Tower, He was threatened. The Apprentice’s Tower is a knife to sever earth and heaven, and Contessa Scaligeri is the only one who can stop him. High stakes then. Does it come off, or does it come crashing down, leaving me with the poor hod-carriers at Babel, unpaid and gibbering nonsense?

Let’s see when the dust settles.

***

Aidan Harte is the author of The Wave Trilogy – Irenicon, The Warring States and Spira Mirabilis – published in the UK by Jo Fletcher Books. Spira Mirabilis will be published on March 27th (eBook) and April 3rd (hardcover).

Also on CR: Interview with Aidan Harte, Guest Post (Yesterday That Never Was), Excerpt of Irenicon

“The Circle” by Dave Eggers (Knopf)

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EggersD-TheCircleAn interesting, timely and disturbing novel

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. As Mae tours the open-plan office spaces, the towering glass dining facilities, the cozy dorms for those who spend nights at work, she is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity. There are parties that last through the night, there are famous musicians playing on the lawn, there are athletic activities and clubs and brunches, and even an aquarium of rare fish retrieved from the Marianas Trench by the CEO. Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in America — even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

The Circle is the first novel I’ve read by Eggers. It is also one of the creepiest books I’ve ever read. The novel revolves around Mae Holland, a new hire at The Circle – a massive, Google-meets-Facebook-type social media goliath. We follow her story as she navigates the company, its quirks, and also its never-ending evolution. We see her life turned upside down as she strives to rise in the Circle’s ranks, to adopt and embrace its new innovations. Completing the Circle becomes an obsession, and despite clear signs of its negative impact on her life and those of her loved ones, the inexorable pull of the company, the sense of community, and compulsion to be a part of something proves too much for Mae to resist.

What made this novel so unsettling was how Eggers has extrapolated an all-too plausible (albeit slippery-slope) evolution of social media. The author’s not subtle, either, and it sometimes felt like he is trying to bludgeon the reader with his own negative feelings about social media and its ubiquitous place in contemporary life. At the same time, he has a point. As The Circle continues to evolve, and gobble up ever-more resources, technology and, above all else, access to its users’ private lives, we see an unprecedented erosion of privacy. More than that, though, is that this erosion is voluntarily embraced by Circle users.

Despite the anvil-from-the-sky approach to delivering his point, Eggers has written an accessible, engaging and above-all thought-provoking novel. It will make you analyse your own social media use, and probably make you adjust your habits, too…

An important, if unsubtle, novel, The Circle is certainly recommended reading for anyone who embraces a well-connected life.

Review: MITOSIS by Brandon Sanderson (Gollancz)

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Sanderson-R-MitosisUSA good short story stop-gap between Steelheart and Firefight

Epics still plague Newcago, but David and the Reckoners have vowed to fight back.

Sanderson self-published this short story, set in the same world as his first super-hero novel, Steelheart. I rather enjoyed the novel (which was the first of the author’s that I’ve read), and when I stumbled across this I was very happy to be able to dive back into the world he’s created. I’m not going to include an official synopsis, as that will give away the ending of Steelheart.

Nevertheless, what you need to know (for both the novel and Mitosis) is that in this reality, super-heroes exist – something happened that bestowed upon a small percentage of the global population special powers. Unlike in the super-hero comic books of Marvel, DC, et al, the power has very much gone to most of these powered individuals’ heads, and they started using them for their own ends. In Chicago, Steelheart reigned supreme with a coterie of other powereds. Steelheart the novel was the story of a fight against this tyranny, spear-headed by an insurgent group known as the Reckoners and their new ‘recruit’, who is a bit of a geek, and has been cataloguing the powered dictators and criminals as a means to learn of their weaknesses.

Mitosis deals with a single powered individual: Mitosis. The story moves quickly, and there is a rather nifty homage (perhaps) to Agent Smith from second and third The Matrix movies. That is all I shall say on the specific plot of this story.

If you are familiar with Sanderson’s writing – be it The Way of Kings or his Mistborn series – then you are sure to know what to expect: brisk, engaging and professional storytelling. The man can certainly write, and I intend to get more of his novels read by the end of this year. [Famous last words, perhaps, but I managed to read three of the four authors I promised to last year…]

Short, but well-worth reading to hold you over until the release of Firefight.

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UPDATE: When I first wrote this, Gollancz had yet to announce the UK cover art, which I have now included below. The UK hardcover edition also includes an excerpt from Firefight and also some character sketches. It’s a really great little book. Perfect for any fan of Sanderson’s writing.

Sanderson-R2-FirefightUK

Upcoming: “The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair” by Joël Dicker (Maclehose Press)

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DickerJ-TruthAboutTheHarryQuebertAffairUKI’ve been seeing a lot of buzz surrounding Joël Dicker’s latest novel, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. Last year, I started reading more (literary) fiction, and I’ve become as keen on finding new novels in all genres, and not just SFF, to feature on here. I’ve become particularly interested in American literary fiction – author such as Michael Chabon, Donna Tartt, Richard Russo, and Claire Messud to name but four (all but one of whom have featured on the blog already). It was therefore interesting to me that Dicker’s novel has created such a storm (it has sold over two million copies on the continent) and that it has even been hailed as having “all the elements of the Great American novel” (La Croix), despite Dicker actually being Swiss. Now that Maclehose Press has unveiled the UK artwork for the novel, I thought it a good time to post a quick something about it.

The novel is translated by Sam Taylor, who also translated HHhH. Here’s the synopsis…

Who killed Nola Kellergan?

Marcus Goldman, the toast of the New York literary scene, is at his wit’s end after being struck by writer’s block. Desperate not to lose his new found fame and in search of inspiration he decides to spend a few weeks in New Hampshire at the home of Harry Quebert, world famous author and his mentor from university.

During his stay, Marcus discovers that in 1975, aged 34, Harry had an affair with 15 year old Nola Kellergan. The summer of their affair, Nola disappeared after she was seen running through the woods, covered in blood. No one has seen Nola since and no one knows what happened.

Then the unthinkable happens, 33 years after her disappearance, the body of Nola Kellergan is found in Harry’s garden. Determined to prove Harry’s innocence, Marcus gets embroiled in the murder case of the century, while everywhere in America people are asking: Who Killed Nola Kellergan?

Not just a book about an unsolved murder case, The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair explores the price of fame and the seduction of success, the ferocity of the publishing industry and the power of the media, love in all its forms and what it means to be a truly great writer.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is published in the UK by Maclehose Press, in May 2014.

An Interview with ALMA KATSU

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KatsuA-I3-DescentUKA few days ago, a copy of Alma Katsu’s third novel, The Descent dropped through the mailbox. It is the third novel in the author’s The Immortal trilogy, but I didn’t (at the time) know too much about the series or the author, so I took the opportunity to send her some questions.

Who is Alma Katsu?

As a girl, I wanted to have a magical, fantastical life but the outlook was kind of narrow and grim, and I think that’s why I turned to creating my own worlds in fiction. Then, funnily enough, I ended up having a life that was the stuff of fantasy: working in intelligence, traveling, doing all this technical, math-y stuff that I never would’ve thought possible for a little storyteller. Lesson: you never know where life will take you. Continue reading →

Christmas Fiction Review Catch-Up: Jonathan Dee, A.S.A. Harrison & John Niven

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I am falling terribly behind on my reviews. So, in order to get caught up a bit more on the backlog, I’ll be combining some reviews into thematic posts (of sorts). This one takes a look at three non-SFF novels I’ve read recently.

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DeeJ-AThousandPardonsJonathan Dee, A Thousand Pardons (Corsair)

Ben and Helen Armstead have reached breaking point and it takes one afternoon – and a single act of recklessness – for Ben to deal the final blow to their marriage, spectacularly demolishing everything they built together.

Helen and her teenage daughter Sara leave for Manhattan where Helen takes a job in PR – her first in many years – and discovers she has a gift for spinning crises into second chances. But can she apply her professional talent to her personal life?

I rather enjoyed this. It was a quick read, but not perfect. The novel starts out with the sudden, spectacular dissolution of Helen’s marriage to Ben, who is quite the narcissist experiencing quite the midlife crisis and breakdown. The first part of the novel follows Helen as she makes her way to New York, and stumbles into a PR job. She has a knack for coaxing out appropriate, believable apologies out of her clients. For a short time, she is able to enjoy this success. Then the novel brings Ben back into the narrative, and we get a more even-handed impression of the two characters – while I had enjoyed reading about Helen, and it did take a little while before reorienting myself for Ben’s side of the story, the novel benefited from them both being central. Dee’s prose is fluid, and I rattled through this novel at quite the pace. At times, though, things moved perhaps a little too fast – Helen’s advancement in the PR business jumps ahead slightly, and Dee doesn’t give much time over to Helen and Sara’s new lives in the big city. I think the author could have spent some more time exploring what each of the characters was going through.

Nevertheless, A Thousand Pardons is an enjoyable novel about a marriage in ruins and a family in crisis; about the limits and joys of self-invention; and about the peculiar seduction of self-destruction. It is also the tale of redemption and forgiveness, of sorts, and the enduring connection families can feel with each other, despite some of the most difficult of circumstances. It’s not a bad introduction to Dee’s fiction, and I enjoyed it enough to convince me to pick up The Privileges at some point in the not-too-distant future.

*

HarrisonASA-TheSilentWifeUKPBA.S.A. Harrison, The Silent Wife (Headline)

Todd Gilbert and Jodie Brett are in a bad place in their relationship. They’ve been together for twenty-eight years, and with no children to worry about there has been little to disrupt their affluent Chicago lifestyle. But there has also been little to hold it together, and beneath the surface lie ever-widening cracks. HE is a committed cheater. SHE lives and breathes denial. HE exists in dual worlds. SHE likes to settle scores. HE decides to play for keeps. SHE has nothing left to lose. When it becomes clear that their precarious world could disintegrate at any moment, Jodie knows she stands to lose everything. It’s only now she will discover just how much she’s truly capable of…

Oh, how I wanted to love this book. For months, it seems, I’ve seen so much praise and a constant trickle of links for great and gushing reviews on Twitter. The book itself is covered in eye-catching blurbs from prominent authors, reviewers, and so forth. So how was it? Well… Politely? It wasn’t for me. Bluntly honest? I was bored. Throughout. I didn’t like either of the main characters. He is a douche, a lecherous cheater, who seems to only appreciate what his wife does for him and the fact that she’s attractive. She is fastidious to a fault, ordered and lacking any impulsiveness and rather bland:

“Meticulous planning has its merits. Life at its best proceeds in a stately manner, with events scheduled and engagements in place weeks if not months ahead. Scrambling for a last-minute date is something she rarely has to do, and she finds it demeaning.”

Now, I understand that both of the characters were probably meant to come across as either a complete ass (him) or quietly in denial about everything (her), but damn it doesn’t make for interesting reading. The synopsis above is not the whole synopsis. I cut the following:

“A chilling psychological thriller portraying the disintegration of a relationship down to the deadliest point when murdering your husband suddenly makes perfect sense.”

I found this as chilling as tepid tap water. That being said, in terms of prose and construction, The Silent Wife is very competent. The author’s prose are very well constructed, which is really the only reason I kept reading. That bit about the novel being a “chilling psychological thriller”? I was waiting for that to happen right up until I turned the final page. Maddeningly bland. This was the biggest let down of the year, I was left wondering if what I bought and read was the same book everyone else had been talking about…

*

NivenJ-StraightWhiteMaleJohn Niven, Straight White Male (William Heinemann)

Kennedy Marr is a novelist from the old school. Irish, acerbic, and a borderline alcoholic and sex-addict, his mantra is drink hard, write hard and try to screw every woman you meet.

He’s writing film scripts in LA, fucking, drinking and insulting his way through Californian society, but also suffering from writers block and unpaid taxes. Then a solution presents itself – Marr is to be the unlikely recipient of the W.F. Bingham Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Modern Literature, an award worth half a million pounds. But it does not come without a price: he must spend a year teaching at the English university where his ex-wife and estranged daughter now reside.

As Kennedy acclimatises to the sleepy campus, inspiring revulsion and worship in equal measure, he’s forced to reconsider his precarious lifestyle. Incredible as it may seem, there might actually be a father and a teacher lurking inside this “preening, narcissistic, priapic, sociopath”. Or is there.

This was a very pleasant surprise. There was a bit of a rocky start – the first couple of chapters painted an awful picture of the protagonist, and I worried that I’d always struggle to engage with him. However, Niven very quickly surprised. Straight White Male ended up being one of my favourite reads of the year.

Kennedy, our protagonist, starts off as one ugliest protagonists I’ve read about. He’s kind of awful: spoiled, wasteful, a drunkard, lewd, a sex addict with an unhealthy disrespect for women (sleeping with someone in the cloak room at his wedding, juggling multiple porn platforms at once)… He’s a complete narcissist. He’s not a pleasant guide for a lot of the opening chapters, which did make me wonder if I wanted to continue reading. Everyone else Kennedy interacts with is as well-written as this asshole, which made me stick with it, and eventually we learn why Kennedy is the way he is, and see his character develop. Niven can definitely write, and write very well, which kept me coming back. So, if you aren’t a fan of anti-hero protagonists, I’d recommend still sticking with the book, as it gets very good.

I really liked the way Kennedy gets to say and do all the things I bet many people living and working in or with Hollywood would love to say to all the self-important, pompous “artistes” with inflated senses of their own genius… He doesn’t shy away from opining on their flaws (or shouting  them at prima donna, uneducated actors). His internal and external commentary is often very funny. He’s also honest about why he does certain things. Kennedy is also not sparing on his frustrations with the publishing industry, either.

“Busy jumping from rewrite to polish to dialogue pass because, of course, all this was easier (and much more remunerative) than spreading his intestines across the page for two fucking years writing a novel. Because the only things he wanted to write about he couldn’t. He wasn’t blocked so much as… finished. The novel? That was a man’s business. He was done with it. Not that anyone knew that yet of course.”

What was most interesting, however, is how Niven slowly unveiled the tragic story of Kennedy’s sister, and how that has effected his behaviour. A lot of what he does, in the end, seems like avoidance and alcohol-fuelled coping and distraction. After the story shifts to the UK, things move quite a bit faster, too, which was a little disappointing. I would have liked some more… well, everything, really. Rather than reading that as an indictment of the novel, consider it my way of saying I wish it had been longer, because it was so good. Which it was.

Straight White Male is a very good novel on some of the many neuroses and coping mechanisms to which men can turn. Funny, irreverent, touching, and well-written, this is definitely recommended.

Mini-Review: THE LANGUAGE OF DYING by Sarah Pinborough (Jo Fletcher Books)

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Pinborough-LanguageOfDyingAn affecting, slim tale of loss, family and never-forgotten pain

Tonight is a special, terrible night. A woman sits at her father’s bedside watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters – all traumatised in their own ways, their bonds fragile – have been there for the past week, but now she is alone. And that’s always when it comes. As the clock ticks in the darkness, she can only wait for it to find her…

Clocking in at only about 125 pages, The Language of Dying nevertheless packs an emotional wallop. A daughter watches over her dying father, as her brothers and sister visit their childhood home. Each is dealing with their own issues and difficulties – be it drug abuse, general unhappiness with their lives, and also their difficulty in dealing with the imminent death of their father. The narrator recounts a number of fond memories and also some extremely painful ones (which, if I recall correctly from a blog-post the author wrote not too long ago, may be at least inspired by certain real events). The book is filled with a great many small, intimate details – it’s quite British, too, in that respect. The family is clearly a broken family, in many ways, and their dealings with each other can be difficult and cause friction. But then, at other times, they reminisce together over happier times. There is perhaps, also, a history of mental instability. This gives a certain dreamlike and questionable quality to a possibly-supernatural slant to the story that is alluded to at the start, and appears again at the end (one I really liked – and I enjoyed the ambiguity).

“… I still look. Forty next birthday and I’m looking out of the window for something that may be imaginary, that I haven’t seen in fifteen years, if ever I saw it at all…”

This is, as I say right at the top, is a powerful, elegant tale of loss and family, and some of the different manifestations of grief. The story is incredibly moving, and I will admit to shedding at least a couple of tears (ahem, ok, more than that). A remarkable, short piece of fiction. Very highly recommended.