The Booker Shortlist: Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

So, here we are. There are only two books remaining on this years Booker shortlist and, a few high points aside, it’s been... forgettable. Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie was surprisingly brilliant however, and it’d be nice to think that the shortlist might throw up a few more second-half surprises. Unfortunately, the superlative hype that has outridden Stephen Kelman's Damilola Taylor inspired Pigeon English means that it won’t get much of a chance to surprise us. Although it does augur well for a decent read at least.

The circumstance of Pigeon English’s inception and incubation makes for a pretty decent story by itself. The debut novel from a former care worker, it sat on a literary agent’s slush pile before being ‘discovered’ and sparking a 12-way publishing Battle Royale. The result of which was a book deal resembling a nauseous procession of digits and, presumably, an extremely happy Stephen Kelman. Cacophonous fanfare abounded, the more restrained critics thrummed with praise, while some of the more excitable types thrashed themselves into a euphoric frenzy.

It has all the makings then of a bestseller, but is it actually any good? Well, it’s interesting… Written in the first person, it describes the experiences of 11-year-old Harrison Opoku, who has just moved to a London estate from his native Ghana. It encompasses the usual trials of being an 11-year-old; including boyish rivalry, incipient morality and a fledgling love interest. As well as taking a look at some of the more unique challenges that immigrants face, all framed by Harri’s partial comprehension. The real focus though is on inner city gang culture, which forms the crux of this narrative. After an older boy is knifed outside a fried chicken place, Harri naively plays detective, unwittingly endangering both himself and his family.

The aim of Pigeon English is admirable at least — it’s a mature portrait of gang culture and inner city youth. In this vision, the actions of gang members are governed by fear and the exigencies of bravado. And even the most violent teenagers are at heart just frightened boys. Their lives are, literally, poised on a knife-edge, subject to the vicissitudes of chance. Sadly though, the execution of the book is beyond disappointing.

You’d have thought from the title that the voice would be a pidgin dialect, but if it is then it’s a shockingly bad attempt. Caught between trying to voice the Ghanaian and the 11-year-old, it fails spectacularly at both. The Ghanaian is represented by a few stock words sprinkled obtrusively over an otherwise derelict voice. And as for the 11-year-old, it’s either appallingly observed or an irritatingly conspicuous attempt to make him oh-so-cutely naïve. In which, I strongly suspect the latter.

Elsewhere, Kelman attempts to introduce some much needed gravity by use of a talking pigeon. Yes, a talking pigeon. Admittedly, it’s unambiguously supposed an abject manifestation of an angel which, with all credit to Kelman, does provide some spiritual relief from Pigeon English’s inescapable conclusion. And it was probably wise of him to anticipate the undoubtedly fragile constitutions of the kind of readers that are enamoured by this kind of lachrymose pandering. Nevertheless, the pigeon spouts such offensively portentous drivel that you finish the book with just a terrible sense of the injustice of the pigeon failing to die.

I always strive to be even handed in my reviews. And, believe it or not, I actually took great pains to neuter this piece, stripping it of excess and unwarranted cruelty. But in this case the edited review was just too short.

The Booker Shortlist: Jamrach’s Menagerie By Carol Birch

"I was born twice."

That will do for a first line. It's self evidently false, obviously, which has the handy implication that the author means for some kind of conceit. That's good. Saves confusion. This should ideally be followed by some kind of gratuitously symbolic encounter with a dangerous wild animal, or a flagrant breach of the natural laws, in true Rushdie style. In this particular case it’s an oral escapade with a tiger. It might be hackneyed, but it’s efficient.

I’m being disingenuously sardonic, of course. This would be just too linear otherwise. Jamrach’s Menagerie actually gets special dispensation from the above cynicism because the encounter with the tiger is actually one of several insubstantial seeds of truth from which the novel quite liberally stems. Secondly, and more importantly, the novel is supposed to be in the Victorian style. The trouble with being a modern author is that to be really exceptional you need an expansive vocabulary, which counter intuitively should be used as little as possible. It’s about transcending verbosity, perfect control and, as it inevitably goes against instinct, unimaginable restraint.

Inescapably however the filter does sometimes get a little blocked and, unless the subject wants to be excreting ‘ennui’s and ‘syzygy’s at dinner parties, the only recourse in relieving the backpressure is historical fiction. In terms of sheer floridness, little beats the Victorian stuff. And, when taken as being imitative of Victorian wordiness, Birch’s writing is actually positively reserved. Eschewing the more ridiculous language, her most indulgent moments are more descriptive than bombastic.

With this restrained indulgence Birch actually creates something that is immensely readable. The elements of Victorian stylistic self-consciousness are overlaid sparingly upon a far more modern text, and what could have been sickly and excessive becomes refreshingly different. The meandering text takes you through ‘jagged lanes with bent elbows and crooked knees’, in a very tactile invocation of a world of Victorian wonderment. Drawing on the sinking of the Essex, also the source material for Melville’s Moby Dick, Jamrach’s Menagerie owes more to the writers of the time than actual history and, recalling authors from Dickens to Thackeray, is a loving celebration of Victorian literature.

Unfortunately, being another first person narrative, it is another novel lacking strong external characters. Jaffy Brown is the young narrator, whose experiences take him surprisingly promptly to sea, away from the insubstantial presence of Jamrach and his eponymous menagerie. And, although there are an abundance of memorable companions at sea, the only significant other characters are Tim Linver, Jaffy’s childhood friend, and later Dan Rhymer, a sea dog and father figure. Even so, these aren’t really characters in their own right, so much as dimensions to Jaffy’s own character. The paucity of real characters is such that you do begin to wonder if, for all its beauty, there might not actually be any real substance to Jamrach’s Menagerie.

The lazy flow of it is misleading though, at some indeterminable point the carefree descriptions of Victorian London, faraway places and innocuous juvenile squabbles give way to a surprisingly grim reality. And you really do wonder, ‘how on earth did I end up here?’ The byline on the book sleeve reads, ‘When you go in search of adventure, travel carefully…’ The mawkish tone of which is entirely incongruous with the morbid transformation that the novel undergoes and, while being broadly accurate, belies the seriousness of the novel.

With this sudden change in fortunes, Birch shows her hand. In a disarmingly short period of time Jamrach’s Menagerie covers a lot of ground, traversing subjects as varied and extensive as friendship, ambition, jealousy, growing up, morality, mortality and madness. And with this understanding of the scope of the novel comes the realisation that this is actually a very impressive book. A conclusion that is no doubt delayed by the scenic and circuitous route the novel takes. The bizarrely proportioned movements feel almost random and have a lazy disregard for conventional narrative structure, it almost feels as though it goes nowhere. But it does, it’s just so startlingly original it takes you a while to realise it. It’s a book of understated felinity, and I loved it. It’s easily the best so far on this year’s list.

The Booker Shortlist: Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan

"The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Faulk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a café and never heard from again. He was 20 years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black"

Although black voices are now pretty common in modern literature, it does sometimes feel as though there is a tendency to rely on archetype. Black American voices, black African voices, black Caribbean voices and modern black urban voices often seem to be the range of it. This is understandable, of course. These voices between them cover the times and places where being black is most resonant; those points, be they geographical or historical, where seemingly the whole extent of black experience can be compressed into comparative moments. Which is always handy for a writer.

In seriousness though, there are parts of black experience that just don’t have an equivalent elsewhere. Not just in terms of black history, but also in human history. It’s probably fair to say then that the over-dominance of certain voices is simply a logical and inevitable consequence of this. The cost though is that, often, black people in literature are reduced to being symbols. They can stand for oppression and revolution, or be a mainstay of allegory, but not nearly often enough do they stand just as people. It’s refreshing then to hear a different voice for once in Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues.

Or it would be, if the promised voice of the black, German jazzman, living in France ever actually appeared. Half Blood Blues really concerns itself more with its narrator, Sid, and his long-time friend and bandmate, Chip — both of whom are American. Hieronymous, or Hiero as it’s more often shortened to, is more subject than character and, even where he is present, is conveniently imitative of his older American companions. So much then for that original, new voice.

That said, really I can understand. I mean can you actually imagine trying to voice a black, German Jazz musician, living in France, in English. I can only conceive of it as part Louis Armstrong and part Die Hard villain. Not good if you want your work to be taken seriously. The quick fix of just making everybody basically American was probably the right way to go. And fortunately Half Blood Blues has much more with which to redeem itself anyway.

It would be ridiculous to neglect the obvious consequences of being black during such a crucial period of the history of persecution, and indeed the book relies on it to turn the narrative. It describes an often neglected Nazi outlook on black people and makes an important historical distinction between the Germans’ approach to ‘stateless’ Rhinelander black people and foreign black people. But, thematically at least, the focus of this book is actually on personal morality and individual psychology. Without giving too much away, the book is not dissimilar to Snowdrops, only minus all the bad stuff I said about that one, obviously. It deals with guilt and self-rationalisation, and has Sid develop a surprising depth of character during its course. It also sees his evolution as a narrator.

Sid’s mellifluous, rhythmic narration has a musicality to it that is well suited to his role as a jazzman. And its lilting flow leads you so easily through the book that it’s only with retrospect that you can really appreciate the extent to which Sid’s character has developed. As you see the narrator change, you’re forced to go back and re-evaluate your earlier judgements, which has the curious effect of forcing you to develop in parallel as a reader. It’s a smooth kind of deception, and consciously so — Esi Edugyan demonstrates the subtlety and grasp of craft that was so sorely missed in AD Miller’s Snowdrops.

Sid is the only real strong character in Half Blood Blues, with Chip acting as catalyst for Sid’s development, and Hiero being more ethereal and symbolic. Other minor characters revolve around Sid, usually performing some function between the former two. At first this heliocentric vision feels like a flaw. But with more reading, and greater hindsight, you come to realise that Sid is the narrator and this is Sid’s universe. It couldn’t be any other way, and Edugyan knows it.

Sadly, the book doesn’t quite go far enough. Like The Sisters Brothers, just as you begin to appreciate the seriousness of the novel, it ends without quite going to the depths it perhaps could have done. Half Blood Blues does still have a wider scope than The Sisters Brothers, and does go further, but you still finish it with a sense that there could have been something more to it. Nevertheless, it is an exceptional novel with a complex narrator who develops as a person, rather than merely as a symbol. A strong effort from a talented writer.

The Booker Shortlist: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

I don’t mind admitting that last week’s slightly disappointing read shook my estimation of the judgment of this year’s Booker panel. I was a bit concerned though that I might struggle to approach the next novel on the list without prejudice, particularly as I had designed to move onto the first western to make the award’s shortlist, i.e. another suspicious inclusion. After a short deliberation however, in which I pondered whether or not to read Barnes first instead, I decided that I have the utmost faith in my own magnanimity. So this week, I present an entirely equable and judicious review of Patrick DeWitt’s Sisters Brothers.

The Sisters Brothers follows Eli and Charlie Sisters on a sort-of-picaresque romp across the 1850’s west, in their bid to kill the enigmatic Hermann Kermit Warm, while in service to a man known only as ‘the Commodore’. I say ‘sort-of-picaresque’ because while the protagonists are indisputably roguish, they do strain the definition of lovable somehow. Narrated by Eli Sister’s, the fatter one with moral tendencies, the book is in a plain prose style and vacillates quickly between depictions of hyper-violence, drunkenness and debauchery, and the narrator’s ruminating on a mid-career existential trauma that is piqued by a career demanding… well, hyper-violence, drunkenness and debauchery. So far, so-so.

It’s actually quite good though. It has a filmic quality that has been compared elsewhere to the movies of the Coen Brothers. And I can’t find a better comparison than that so I’m forced to do the same, although I think it probably also owes something to Quentin Tarantino’s work. Eli isn’t exactly a cultured narrator, but DeWitt is confident in his portrayal of him as such, and one consequence of this scarcity is that DeWitt has to rely on the dialogue to communicate expressively, which he does surprisingly well. Between the clipped and simplistic brotherly ejections there is something more profound, sequestered in the spaces. The dramatic irony present throughout The Sisters Brothers makes up for the limitations of the narrator, and DeWitt manages to compress his ideas pithily in the unsaid.

It’s also pretty funny, which in my view is where the Tarantino connection comes in — for, as violent as it is, the violence is somehow unreal, made light of by its bounty. You can’t help but laugh when, after Charlie points out the necessity of a number of tidy-up murders, Eli blithely amends the bromidic assertion that ‘it will be the last bit of bloodshed for [his] foreseeable future’ to it simply being a ‘final era of killing’. It’s with this proclivity towards the unexpected that DeWitt really impresses. The Sisters Brothers concerns itself significantly with the accumulation of money and, through Eli’s bemused misuse of it, attacks the dogmatic conflation of money and happiness. You’d expect then that, being set during the 1850s gold rush, it would make great use of the historical context, but no. Apart from the inevitable incidental aspects, DeWitt completely eschews it. That’s what I like about DeWitt, it’s almost as though he’s baiting you. He’ll consciously work towards the trite and expected and you’ll think, ‘Aha! Too obvious, Mr DeWitt!’ but then at the very last moment he’ll triumphantly kick it down. And you feel stupid for being so premature.

The Sisters Brothers does have a weakness though, which is that it’s too short. And I don’t mean that in a gushing ‘I couldn’t get enough of it’ kind of way, it really is too short. Don’t get me wrong; some novels can get away with being short, but The Sisters Brothers just can’t. Communicating complex ideas is always going to be a challenge when the narrator isn’t particularly good at communicating, and DeWitt does it well. But when the message is so carefully parcelled in the interstices of words, then space becomes an issue. The ideas need the time to accrue by increments; to fractionally wash away, scour and reform; and to develop shades and complexity. Normally I take great pain to avoid revealing the greater turns of theme and the intellectual resolution, but in this case I feel no such compunction. The dominance of Charlie is broken, and the brothers seemingly mend their ways. The path of the novel is blindingly obvious from the outset and, tragically, the big, ugly flaw in what would otherwise have been a great book is the antithesis to that which I’d previously thought to be DeWitt’s greatest strength.

The Booker Shortlist: Snowdrops by A.D. Miller

You always expect the Booker to throw up a few surprises, as the passing judges inevitably strive to leave their own mark on the award. But this year’s shortlist in particular has been especially unexpected, with the inclusion of the award’s first western and not one but two books from debut novelists. The first of the debuts that I’m going to look at sees A.D. Miller, who is by day an editor for the Economist, telling a gritty Russian tale of post-communist corruption in Snowdrops.

Somewhat predictably the response to Snowdrops has been mixed with some praising the unconstrained approach of the judging panel and others lamenting its inclusion at the expense of other strong runners. Somewhere in amongst all the knee-jerk and snobbish vitriol though there is an important question: is this book really a genuine contender for this year’s strongest work of novelistic literary art, or rather just headline fodder from a panel looking for a quick reputation?

Snowdrops does have a very aesthetic appeal, with bleakly evocative descriptions of a decaying Russia gripped by parasitism and duplicity, against which Miller sketches a highly original morality tale. Recounted as a first-person confessional, and addressed to the narrator’s bride-to-be, it tells of the final year of a British expatriate’s experience working for a Moscow-based law firm. Primarily though, the focus is on the seduction and eventual betrayal of the narrator by an icily quintessential Russian girl, Masha. The more than slightly suspect dealings of the law firm meanwhile are woven in as a parallel subplot.

Deeply atmospheric, Snowdrops uses the harsh Russian winter to great effect, piling on the snow as the layers of deceit accrue. Meanwhile, sensuously contrasting depictions of eroticism are deployed to blur the line between passion and seediness, or good and bad, in the book’s underpinning conceit, of morality being lost in a snowstorm. The idea presented is that morality is transient, that we are capable of astonishing oversight and tenuous self-rationalisation when the reward is personal gain, which is enormously appealing as a literary theme. And no doubt Miller’s experience as a journalist has contributed to his ability to structure a narrative, as the book is thematically well realised and the sense of menace and dislocation is ratcheted up expertly with the deepening winter.

There’s something rough about Snowdrops though — it feels like a first novel. It goes beyond genre fiction, and it’s indeed better than the average crime novel, but it’s flawed. Overwritten perhaps. When it’s at its best, Snowdrops is brooding and impressive, but Miller doesn’t quite seem to know when to stop. Often you’ll read a passage that is darkly suggestive by its dialogue alone, but then Miller goes and ruins it by drowning it in overly sentimental reflection. And then there are the wince-inducing similes, which occur all too frequently. Albeit with a relentless heterogeneity that seems to lull you into believing that you might just be past the worst of it. Its greatest failing though is that it’s too perfectly contrived; it doesn’t have enough of a sense of irresolution or ambiguity about it to let it develop of it’s own. Miller’s presence is stifling to the point of being limiting.

I know that I'm being harsh, but it’s important to consider it in terms of its viability as a candidate for the Booker. As a first time novelist Miller certainly has potential, and the novel would be better from a good edit alone. In fact, you can actually see him developing as a novelist as the book progresses; it literally improves as you read it. But then that’s not really what you want in a novel that is supposed to be among the very best that the Commonwealth has to offer. I personally find it hard to believe that this can really compete with works this year from the likes of Alan Hollinghurst and Julian Barnes. A.D. Miller is certainly one to watch, but for me this one was a mistake.

The plan, which is liable to change.

Over the next 6 weeks I'm going to be doing a series of reviews on this year's Man Booker shortlist. Obviously they won't be done in time for the announcement of the winner, which is largely (entirely) due to the mind-bendingly rapid service offered by the Guardian Bookshop, who only took 5 weeks to deliver my books. Such is life though, and I shall probably just treat it as though I don't know who the winner is (although I probably will). As usual it's a contentious list, so I'll assume readability and focus mainly on artistic merit.

I'll try and get the first review up by Wednesday.

Oh, and after that I might do a feature on last year's Man Booker. This is a cop-out, as I've already read them. But I really need to make some time to read Paradise Lost. It'll probably work out okay anyway, as they're all on bargain book stands now, so they could be cheap, good reads. Or not. You'll have to wait and see.

A.S. Byatt's Ragnarok: The End Of The Gods — A Review

As one of this country’s most celebrated literary authors, it almost seems to be the expectation that that A.S. Byatt’s novels will impress. Her latest book however presents a peculiar challenge in that, strictly speaking, it is not a novel. As part of the Canongate series of retold myths, Ragnarok sees Byatt relating the eponymous Norse destruction tale. In which the Gods of Asgard, under the leadership of Odin, march inexorably towards a ruinous confrontation with Loki the Trickster and a multifarious coalition of bestial progeny, Titanesque Giants and primeval prosopopoeia.

While other authors in the series have chosen to ‘novelise’ the form — developing mythical characters and themes towards the complexity typically found in the novel — Byatt, as she freely admits in the afterword, has instead decided to tell the story in its more primitive form. As this could potentially present quite a serious challenge for a writer trying to create something unique and personal, it is interesting then to see how she fared.

The first thing that you notice, if not already familiar with the source material, is just how much of a gift the original Norse mythology is to a talented writer — the story is rich in animism and anthropomorphic metaphor with wolves chasing the sun and the moon across the sky and the sky itself made from the skull of an ice giant, felled by Odin and his brothers. And, like their ancient Grecian forebears, the Gods are wonderfully flawed representations of human traits. It also has quite a pleasing clutter to it, with the Gods co-habiting the universe with primordial giants and other miscellaneous early wisps of deities.

It’s Byatt’s treatment of the fable however that is most striking. Byatt relates the myth via the autobiographical ‘thin child’, whose experiences of wartime Britain are interspersed with her relation of the tale — a strategy that happily lends complexity to the work as a whole, whilst allowing Byatt to retain the essence of the original. In this Byatt is really in her element, with her expert control of voice having the adult, child and fable form a kind of Russian doll. The story of Ragnarok is told with the poetic tone of Sturluson as apprehended by the thin child, a feat that’s handled with remarkable virtuosity. Where the intrusions of the child’s voice into the myth are conspicuous and bold, with asides and misapprehensions, the voice of the adult is subtle and occasional. The restraint of the adult as contrasted with the starkness of the child shows enormous grasp of the differences in sensibility, and allows the myth to be read on different levels.

Conceptually also, the work is impressive. Understanding the role of mythology as abstraction, Byatt is happy to present Ragnarok as something ill defined and irregular. Acknowledging that it is fictive and drawn from many sources, adult and child both are able to accept a constant duality, where events can have both happened and not happened; names are changeable; characters can be the same and distinct; and myth can be both real and make-believe. The words tumble from the page with randomness and spontaneity, evocative of a sedimentary accumulation of human story, and Byatt’s descriptions are things of colour and shapelessness. This free and formless style is wonderfully appropriate to the mythology, which is itself so eclectic and untidy.

It’s funny that Byatt has decided to focus on the demise of the Gods, when Ragnarok is as much about creation as it is destruction. The liveliness of the prose is distinctly at odds with the title, and there is a naturalist’s glee in the lengthy lists of species that populate the book. But then I guess this is just another example of the duality present throughout. Austere scientific names of marine fauna, such as tunicates and polychaete worms, are contrasted with folksy common plant names, as adult and child are contrasted, and creation and destruction. Although in the afterword Byatt distances herself from having written sanctimonious parable, there is a distinct aspect of allegory about it, which relies on the contrast. It’s subtle though. Perhaps more an observation of human nature than a message. There’s almost a cynicism about it — in the way that there is both a lesson to be learned from the Gods and a lesson that can’t be learned. I guess she sees our own destruction as inevitable as that of the Gods.

Byatt herself sums it up best when the child ruminates on the loss of ‘the bright black world’ beyond the gate. All and nothing.

...And Now For Something Completely Different

It’s sometimes difficult to stay on target. My original intention was to develop a blog that had a consistent theme, that was cohesive and of singular vision. The plan was to write about those books that have, without sounding too much like F.R. Leavis, literary merit. I’d also planned on writing something every week. The problem with this is that I also have to work — so the book that I review each week tends to be the only one that gets read. I don’t generally have a problem with this, as I love the books I read. But every now and again you just want to laugh.

Now, I’m not saying that literary novels aren’t funny, because many of them are. But sometimes the requirement that the jokes be part of a greater rumination on the trials of ageing, or the brevity of life can be a little draining. Particularly when you don’t have a lot of money and you’re haemorrhaging wasted days. So this week I’ve taken a break from my usual fare, with a book that simply made me laugh, Unseen Academicals.

As the 37th novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, Unseen Academicals isn’t likely to attract the attention of the serious literary types who normally, and quite reasonably, treat prolific authors with some trepidation. And indeed, such caution is probably justifiable for Pratchett’s work, which is often joyously silly and features wizards — a profession persistently out of fashion in serious Literature since Le Morte Darthur. To treat it as assembly line fiction however is to understate its appeal.

Unseen Academicals sees the wizards of the Unseen University facing a contemporary, if somewhat farcical, challenge— a crippling budget cut. The wizards face having their meals reduced to a paltry three-per-day, unless they can fulfil the baffling terms of the bequest that majority funds their sumptuous culinary lifestyle, namely by fielding an Unseen University football team. As you can imagine, high jinks inevitably ensue.

The strength of Pratchett’s work lies principally in his characters, which are crafted to be so wilfully excessive that they border on sublime. The superlatively titled Archancellor Ridcully returns with a glut of boorishly classic lines, while Ponder Stibbons is, as ever, the perpetually misused post grad — amply illustrated by the following extract:

'It is a well-known fact in any organisation that, if you want a job done, you should give it to some one who is already very busy […]
In UU, Ponder Stibbons was that busy man.'

In addition to the familiar faces, Pratchett also introduces a number of new creations, including the idiot savant Mr Nutt, who aspires to coach the eponymous football team; Glenda Sugarbean, a stereotype challenging pie-maker; Trevor Likely, heir-apparent to the title of ‘Prince Of Football’ — but ‘promised his ma he wouldn’t play’; and Juliet Stollop, soon to be Discworld’s first fashion model. The latter two becoming the star-crossed lovers in a facetious tribute to the bard, retold through the medium of football tribalism.

Pratchett’s writing is simple and accessible, as you would expect, but there is a joy in it that is infectious. Unabashed when it comes to using word play, Pratchett is a connoisseur of linguistic comedy — his puns aren’t restrained, but rather recall the puerile relish of language that can be found in Wilde’s ‘The Importance of being Earnest’. He also shows that he is capable of surprising virtuosity, as in his ridiculous use of the mock grandiose in, ‘There was a brief interregnum as the ladle went from bowl to bowl’. Clearly Pratchett is someone who takes enormous pleasure in his craft, and it shows.

You do then have to wonder if Terry Pratchett might not be better than he’s sometimes given credit for. His wit impresses, yet he resists the urge towards ostentation; references to Keats and Shakespeare, and a play on the name of the scholar Erasmus are nods to literary tradition, but the homage remains populist, which befits the tone of his work. I suspect that Pratchett might have gained more literary recognition had his work been a little more acerbic. The satire in Pratchett’s writing is astute and constant enough to reward re-reading, but always benign. Perversely though, this is what makes his work so inimitable — few writers have the ability to present such compelling satire whilst offending so few.

Pratchett has recently won plaudits from A.S. Byatt for the simple fact that he writes books that people want to read. I don’t think that this necessarily differentiates him from any of the other popular genre-fiction writers, but I can understand why Byatt has singled him out. The linguistic zeal in his writing appeals to the hearts of those who take an unusual pleasure in the English language — it is this simple fact that makes him a companionable, if un-literary, retreat for literary types. I might hope that posterity will relieve him from that purgatory of sorts, but I don’t doubt that he’d rather be where he is now.

Post Office - A Review

“This is presented as a work of fiction and dedicated to nobody”

I can’t say whether it is for fear of appearing creatively barren, or if perhaps it is simply a case of sustaining an illusion, but it seems that more than a few authors are understandably reticent when it comes to admitting to having written autobiography. You have to admire then the fierce honesty in the above dedication, taken from Charles Bukowski’s first novel — Post Office.

Labelled as a misogynist by his detractors and a misanthrope by his proponents, Bukowski easily drew as much vitriol as admiration, in life and in writing. He similarly divided the critics, with some deploring his excessive reliance on self-caricature and others celebrating the naked simplicity of his prose. Critical reception aside though, Bukowski produced an expansive collection of work — some good, some less so — and if there is a consensus on Bukowski, then it is that he is an unpopular legend of American Literature.

Now, I have to admit to having been a little apprehensive about reviewing Bukowski, as legend is legend, and writing such a review for the turgid Internet backwaters is undoubtedly an exercise in futility. Evidently however, I’ve decided to do it anyway and my reasons are twofold: 1. Bukowski remains a controversial figure, and 2. Post Office is often overshadowed by his later work.

Post Office’s protagonist is Henry Chinaski, named quite obviously— think Samsa/ Kafka— after Bukowski, and the narrative centres, excepting a brief diversion, around life on the eponymous Post Office. Chinaski, later to reappear in Ham On Rye, is an anti-hero who stretches the ‘hero’ aspect past breaking, and it is not hard to see why Bukowski had a reputation for chauvinism. Chinaski’s language is crude and idiosyncratic, particularly when it comes to his indelicate descriptions of women and sex. Indeed, the coarseness of the text is so abrasive that you could be forgiven for putting the book down before the first chapter is out. To do so however, would be to miss a great deal of beauty, and a whole lot more ugliness.

Unsurprisingly, it is in the descriptions of the Post Office that the book is at its strongest; the dullness of the Post Office is rendered in negative against the colourful Chinaski, and it looms malignantly over every facet of life in the novel. The Post Office could easily make for an unreadable backdrop, but Bukowski’s dry humour and strong characters, deftly illustrated by terse, simple speech, make the novel vivid and appealing. The monolithic presence of the Post Office could potentially be read as being allegorical, representative of a world in which the working classes have little real freedom, but I think that to apply such a value-laden interpretation would be to misunderstand Bukowski, who was ever a cynic and a realist. I suspect that the Post Office is rather simply a fact of life, for Chinaski and Bukowski both.

Similarly, calling Bukowski ‘the voice of the working classes’ would also be wrong, and I suspect that most in the aforementioned group would resent being represented by such vulgarity. But I think that it is fair to say that his is a voice that is little heard in traditional Literature; it’s ugly and it’s depraved, but it is also very, very sad. Throughout Post Office, there is a duality in the way that Chinaski seeks both instant gratification and genuine warmth and affection — you have to wonder whether the predilection for the former might not just be an attempt at self-sabotage, masking a true desire for the latter. This is certainly an interpretation that would fit well with the Bukowski’s own self-representation, the brutality of which almost reads like self-harm.

Those that reflexively label Bukowski’s work as misanthropic or misogynistic misunderstand the man. It is an axiom that Bukowski only ever wrote through the prism of self-portrayal, so the misogyny, the misanthropy, the ugliness and the sadness can only be elements of a self-portrait, consciously applied. Charles Bukowski himself may well have been all of the above, but the only thing that we can be sure of on reading Post Office alone is that he thought himself ugly.

To sum it up then is very difficult — the adjectives that are typically used here just don’t work. Warm? No. Beautiful? Not Conventionally. Funny? Perhaps. Sad? Maybe too sad. All that I can really say then is that, provided you can stomach it, it’s very, very good.

Cloud Atlas - A Brief Review

The idea of interlinking narratives to form a larger whole — with their relationships often remaining obscured until a late reveal — already feels a little tired as a film concept. And, with modern fiction increasingly striving to emulate cinema, it doesn’t exactly impress from a literary perspective either. It might be understandable then to approach Cloud Atlas with more than slight apprehension. The cover notes offer little more than that the adventure is indeed an amazing one, and they kindly warn you to expect a composite narrative. Not exactly the most auspicious beginning. Fortunately, as those already familiar with David Mitchell will have already guessed, Cloud Atlas is much, much more than a funky narrative. In fact, it’s not a funky narrative at all really.

Cloud Atlas parts way with expectation in that the component parts of the novel work just as well independently of each other as they do as a whole. Rather than having obfuscation prevail until the last third, where the thread of continuity is sanctimoniously revealed, Mitchell instead favours a thematic link — where the infrequent overlaps in his tales function more as tasteful flourishes than as being fundamental to narrative completion. This is a far more subtle approach and one that I much prefer to the former, in which I find that authorial presence can become overwhelming by its contrivance.

Considering Cloud Atlas on a thematic level then, how does it fare? In my view, pretty well. It is ostensibly spiritual with rebirth as leitmotif, questions of morality figuring prominently, and no shortage of religious characters and occurrences. Indeed, I suspect that for the more pious reader a spiritual interpretation could well be the most compelling. One moment in particular stands out, where Mitchell artfully disproves a fictional religion in the course of the narrative, yet simultaneously accedes a latent supernaturalism. This makes a fitting tribute to the vagaries of agnosticism.

Unfortunately however, I put myself firmly in the atheist camp. In order to deliver on subtext, Cloud Atlas must offer up more than purely religious interpretation. This it does. Taken as a social and political discourse, I feel that the novel positively thrives. The questions of morality are of course universal, but it is when they are considered as a purely social function that they become the most profound. It is with expert irony that Mitchell compares greed to motivation and finds the answer to be no more than perspective. The pensive nature of Cloud Atlas is also in evidence in its structure, with the second half of the novel being an inversion of the first — an invitation to reflection.

If the novel does have a weakness, then it is that it does at times lack subtlety. Mitchell does sometimes give in to the temptation to have his characters explicitly explain his big ideas, which does seem a little as though he is underestimating his audience. Then again, of course, this could be construed as one of his strengths — the novel doesn’t creak and groan with the austerity of ‘big L’ Literature. Readability can sometimes be a controversial quality in a literary novel, so you do really have to admire the way that Mitchell has managed to sneak it into Cloud Atlas. By offering up his fragments as a pastiche of other novel forms, he is able to shamelessly incorporate those ‘cheaper’ qualities that make for a page-turner, all the while managing to retain his integrity. Not everyone will like it, but I for one am grateful.