The Booker Shortlist: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

'Don’t think ill of me, remember me well. Tell people you were fond of me, that you loved me, that I wasn’t a bad guy. Even if, perhaps, none of this was the case.'

I’ve covered five of the six books on the 2011 Booker shortlist, and two of them already have dealt with the confessional impulse. In AD Miller’s Snowdrops, it is an impending marriage that provokes Nick Platt’s letter of penitence. Meanwhile in Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood Blues, Sid Griffiths is undeniably facing the penumbra of his twilight years when he is begrudgingly forced to re-evaluate his past. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes’s latest offering, is another such book— leading me unavoidably to believe that perhaps some members of the judging panel have something sinister lurking in their pasts.

The sense of an Ending is a slim volume of only 149 short pages. And, as the title suggests, is akin to Half Blood Blues in that it’s a late life settling of affairs that motivates the book’s narrator, Tony Webster, to recount an episode from his youth. It is similar to Half Blood Blues however in more ways than just this. Unquestionably, the book’s overriding theme is the fallibility of memory.

It is a bequest of five hundred pounds from the barely known mother of an ex-girlfriend that initiates the events of The Sense of an Ending; a sum ‘bigger than nothing, not as big as something’. Further, Tony is inexplicably left a diary in the bequest belonging to a precocious school friend, Adrian Finn. Barnes deftly interweaves the attempts of the adult Tony to retrieve the diary from its withholder, Veronica — Tony’s ex, and Tony’s incomplete recollections of the young Adrian and the enigmatic Veronica.

Barnes’s stint as a Crime writer, under the pseudonym Pat Kavanagh, has no doubt benefited this book, as Tony’s fragmented memories are pieced together with well-judged sense of tension and anticipation. It is an intellectual mystery, and quite brilliant for it. Barnes flawlessly captures the paranoia of older age and the implicit fear of decline, as Tony constantly questions and seeks verification for his own imperfect recollections. As a narrator his voice is intelligent but ostensibly un-poetic; given to histrionic philosophising and affectation, he is pitiable and certainly dwarfed by Adrian’s intellectual presence.

Meanwhile, Veronica is aloof and calculating— both in memory and in the present. Her character is revealed in slithers; in the meagre secretions offered from Tony’s memories and in her later shrewdly guarded exchanges with Tony, which occur first by email and later in terse meetings held in the brasserie of Oxford Street branch of John Lewis.

Or that’s what I thought, anyway. But then I re-read the book…

I don’t normally have time to completely re-read the books that I review, but The Sense of an Ending underwent such a late stage transformation that I was pretty much forced to reconsider it in its entirety. It’s well worth the effort though, as it’s only with a second reading that you can truly realise the sheer complexity of the novel. I like to think of it as one of the those novels where you’re given two entirely different perspectives on a singular event— only in this case the view of the second person is aptly missing.

Instead, Barnes leaves it to the reader to intuit the limitations of the narrator and infer the other story. Freed from Tony's influence, a second reading allows everything to be rendered other way around. And you realise that the book is dripping with double meanings and alternative interpretations. Now, Veronica becomes beleaguered by Tony’s imperious and insensitive presence; her terseness at first shyness and later recalcitrant indifference— a consequence of pain inflicted. Likewise, Adrian’s loftiness seems to run less deep— a defensive veneer that masks his vulnerability.

Akin to Snowdrops and Half-Blood Blues, Tony’s lapses of memory in The Sense of an Ending are self-serving and selective. He seeks subjectively to bend the facts and subconsciously manipulate his own history in order to fulfil the universal human need for a moral self. Even his contrite moments come late, and only when faced by indisputable truths, as though remorse is the last recourse in maintaining that all-important moral self-image.

We aren’t supposed to feel duped though, or to dislike the narrator. His subjectivity is instead empathetic— forcing us to see ourselves in Tony and to question our own fallible recollections. I no longer suspect that certain members of Booker judging panel have an ominous secret, but rather that we all do. Intra-personal duplicity is all-pervasive and of all-time. But, perhaps, presciently so…

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.