The Illuminations

Andrew O'Hagan, 2015 

Curiously, this book raises many questions similar to those of the last one I read (Little Bastards in Springtime, also published in 2015, and with a cover image that uses the same form). It deals with the stories that we tell ourselves about war and about living our lives.
  The contemporary war in this story is the British forces in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. (It was the Bosnian civil war in Little Bastards.) It’s complicated by a separate story in which a woman is losing her memories of her husband in the second world war. Both lines of this novel involve a lot of story-telling.
  Luke (a Scot) joined the British Army to follow his father who was killed in Ireland, a bit of complicated story telling in itself. He leads a company into an Afghan skirmish that goes badly. He no longer buys the stories (even the cynical ones the soldiers tell themselves), although he does play along with his mates when he meets them later – perhaps in order not to weaken their own faith.
  Anne’s story is more complicated still. A Canadian photographer who relocated to New York where she trained with Stieglitz, then relocated to England following World War 2, she forms a relationship with a photographer in Blackpool before moving to live in Scotland. She is inspired creatively by him, and has a relationship that leads to a child. Later we find out that the stories he has told her, and that she has told her family and perhaps believes herself, are not entirely true. But by the time of the novel, she is slipping into Alzheimer’s disease, confuses the past and the present, and seems happy to believe the stories that she has been telling everyone. To her, they are the reality, and happier than the life she has led.
  The two stories come together when Luke, Anne’s grandson, takes her to Blackpool, finds out the reality, and concludes that Anne can live the rest of her life happily in her idealized fantasy. He seems to accept that the stories in his own life might be okay too, if they help people cope.
  In spite of the interesting themes, and the polished prose in this novel, it didn’t do much for me. I found it too removed and I never felt drawn to the story or the characters. There is a distant, detached tone, and the story itself is just not very interesting. This may just be an idiosyncratic response, because I know the book is well regarded, and was nominated for a Booker prize. There are many good things about the book – O’Hagen has some poetic, precise descriptive language that is quite evocative. And he has a facility for shifting viewpoints around a scene, sometimes showing how two or three people see it within a single paragraph. His descriptions of Luke’s crew in the heat of Afghanistan, not sure who to trust, not knowing what’s ahead, and the sudden reaction when things go wrong, give what seem to be a very realistic picture of a military crew.
  But all of this, somehow, leaves me unengaged. When I compare it to the reaction I had to Little Bastards, it lacks the emotional response that Jevrem’s story drew out. Possibly young Jevrem is just a more relatable character than the older introspective Luke. And Anne is barely there except as a character that other people relate to, and most of her past seems absent. Perhaps this is the challenge of writing about a character whose past is evaporating.
  Overall, I found this novel unsatisfying, and I found myself eager to get through it.

Little Bastards in Springtime

Katja Rudolph, 2015 

A boy of 11 lives through the siege of Sarajevo as his family and friends die around him. He suffers terrible physical and mental trauma. With his mother, sister and granny, he arrives in Canada five years later as a refugee. The people there (here) are nice but stupid and ineffectual. He gradually takes his own path to recovery.
  There is a lot in this book that is intense and gripping. It’s a visceral exploration of civil war and civil society from the point of view of a youth who cannot escape them, and Katja Rudolph gives the reader a textured sense of the reality. I could see what it’s like living under a siege, with little food and snipers shooting down the streets, as well as the drugged-up life of a deeply alienated kid in suburban Toronto or in jail. It’s pretty scary. Rudolph shows how people make foolish decisions, or get pushed into them, or get dragged along whether they decide or not. Even when motivated by the best intentions, in bad circumstances they make bad choices. Jevrem’s pacifist father feels he has to fight. Jevrem adopts bizarre ways to try to help people whom he thinks need his help.
  In spite of the grim scenes, the book is a positive one. Jevrem’s mother and his sister find their own ways to cope, even if they appear a bit fragile. Jevrem launches himself on a long, complex journey to a better future, which ultimately seems to work out. This gets a bit mythical in the last part of the book, although it still seems to me to be well grounded in reality.
  Rudolph makes a recurring theme of the stories people tell themselves, national and family stories and myths. Jevrem’s granny keeps retelling the stories of her life as a young Yugoslav partisan fighting the Nazis with Tito, and building the country after the war. Jevrem takes inspiration from her heroism and her victories. But her stories of surviving in the forest have parallels to Jevrem’s family starving in Sarajevo, and her building a railway while writing to her separated love sounds a bit like she’s in a forced labour camp. Her stories are idealized, justifying what she went through, although they, perhaps happily, give Jevrem the inspiration he needs to make himself a new life.
  When I first read the novel, I was a bit disappointed in the ending – it seemed a bit too idealized as Jevrem is re-inspired to take a productive new role in his life. But on further thought, I realized that in fact the whole book is told from Jevrem’s point of view, and so is the ending. It is idealized because that’s how he sees it. His ending is a story that he is telling himself and if it keeps him going on a good path, that’s a good thing. If he finds out later that it’s not entirely realistic, perhaps he’ll find another story that will keep him going.

  I liked this book quite a lot. It’s gritty and realistic, but it also raises questions about society, ranging from ideology and war to how we deal with children of war and refugees. One question that it raises for me is, what stories do we as Canadians tell ourselves about our values and our reality? Our national myths about our welcoming society and our supportive social systems have some gaping holes as Jevrem sees them.

Tom Jones

Henry Fielding, 1749 

This was another pleasure to read in that slow, reflective 18^th century style that is filled with humour, character, incident and social observation. The plot is convoluted but easy to follow, and the main story of Tom’s sexual misadventures on the way to virtuous love is never really in question – the only issue is how many diversions he will have to go through before he gets where he should be.

  The characters are satires, mainly of the landed gentry and the titled, although it’s always clear where the lines of power and authority lie (so much clearer than in our contemporary times.) Much of the humour and enjoyment of the novel comes from Fielding’s ironic descriptions of his characters’ motivations and actions, and his observations on the society they live in – apparently hypocritical at all levels.

  Through the satire and his ongoing commentary, Fielding points to the inequality of women in society, while also pointing out that many of the women are more intelligent and well read than the men they are linked to. The strongest storyline aside from Tom’s is the conflict between the strong-minded Sophia and the idiot father she loves, but who wants to command her obedience. It ends only when their two interests finally come together in the union of two large estates.

  Fielding also shows the stark contrast between the wealthy and the common people, although with no suggestion that that inequality might be a problem. Poor people struggle with their lot, and sometimes don’t make it, just like the higher class people who run out of money. But there are both good and venal lower class people as well as upper class ones. In fact, one of the interesting features of the book is that many of the characters have complex morals. They may at times be venal, and at other times generous and loyal. In this way, they are less stereotypes than the characters in many other novels where most characters except for the leading ones are either good or bad, with little shading. One of the few exceptions is the good Squire Allworthy, whose kindness and generosity are exceeded only by his wisdom and honour. He’s a bit godly, and a contrast to the more realistic common characters. The other exception is his evil nephew, whose unscrupulous lies, greed and lack of honour are also unmixed.

  Tom’s early relatively carefree life and his kind nature set him up as a good person with a natural morality, but it seems that that’s not enough. Fielding makes a strong argument for morality in the last parts of the novel, and his favoured morality is Christian. (The Christian clerics, however, don’t come off well – in fact, of the representatives of Christian and “natural” morality, although both are extremes, it’s the natural philosopher who comes off best after his deathbed conversion to real Christianity.) And while it seems that Tom’s natural inclination to enjoy life, including his relationships with women, is at first carefree, it later gets him intro trouble and he has to renounce his free sexuality to enter a relationship with his true love. (Much like Fielding did, the introduction suggests.) Interestingly, however, while Tom is a willing participant in a range of sexual adventures, it seems to be the women who initiate the relationships and get Tom in trouble. So Tom is a sort of innocent, much in contrast to the reality of young men of privilege, I suspect. The story of his parentage, however, shows that women cannot enjoy the same carefree sexuality that he does.
  I’m glad to have read this after Mason & Dixon, because it shows how closely Thomas Pynchon copied an 18^th century style in his writing, with the absurdity, authorial commentary and extraordinary characters. The formal style of Tom Jones is quite different from the informality of Mason & Dixon, but both have a complex plot, complex characters, and long discourses on side topics. But in spite of the rambling stories, it was always a pleasure to come back to both of these novels because their worlds are so rich and full of enjoyment.

The Woman in White

Wilkie Collins, 1860 

I read this as an ebook, in bits and pieces over the course of several months. Probably that does not do it justice, but I suspect that if I’d tried to read it through, I would have got tired of it and quit. It’s written in a leisurely 19^th century style, often stopping to explore and comment on a character’s thoughts and emotions, which greatly slows the pacing. I can imagine it being read aloud in a drawing room after supper, with the family enjoying the different voices, gasping in horror at the villainy of some of the characters and cheering on the plucky heros. This is probably how Wilkie Collins expected it to be read, and it would probably work best as a melodramatic entertainment with a good reader. (Apparently there are 15 versions of this at Audible.com.)
  To enjoy this kind of pacing, I think there has to be more going on than the simple, if mysterious, plotting in this book. But the characters are one-dimensional and the themes are obvious. There’s not really a lot to think about here. In that sense, it’s a bit like a superficial television detective serial. Entertainment, perhaps but mindless and not very engaging.

  What is interesting to see is the moral absoluteness of the heroic characters. The heroes are gentlemen of honour, who would not consider going back on their word, or questioning another gentleman’s honor. Women, to them, are sacrosanct, gentle beings to be elevated and protected. This makes the bad guys particularly villainous when they abuse their wives or deceive others for money. They all speak in restrained, elevated language, making the weakness of the one who loses his temper quite unspeakable. Fortunately for the English readership, the most evil of the bad guys is Italian, explaining his absolute lack of moral character and his odd habits.

  The characters of the few women are also interesting, except perhaps for the central object, one of two women in white. She, the object of the hero’s attention, is helpless, frequently sickly, and doting – the Victorian stereotype of the adored, delicate, angelic female. By contrast, her poor half-sister is energetic, intelligent, resourceful and strong. She does draw the admiration of the males, but only the most villainous of the bad guys is attracted to her, and in spite of her evident love for the hero and his admiration of her, she loses out to the cute one. If this book doesn’t have the outright racism of Collins’ Moonstone, it makes up for it in sexist stereotyping.

  Along with these black and white human values are the social and political values implicit in the text, such as the repeated references to the unimpeachable British systems of justice and democracy (especially when the villainous Italian Count Fosco extols their superiority). The highest values are reserved for the educated upper classes, while the lower classes are described as ignorant and crude.

  These same faults are common in other writers of 19^th century fiction. Dickens drags out exposition, examines his characters thinking, deals in idealized stereotypes – but he does it with greater substance and style. His depth of detail and character – even for exaggerated characters – draws a reader in, and his emotion creates sympathy. This is lacking in Collins. So for me, this is enough of Wilkie Collins – when I want a leisurely 19^th century read, I’ll turn to Dickens, George Eliot or one of their contemporaries. 

Mason & Dixon

Thomas Pynchon, 1997 (November 2015)

  This is a mad book, and wonderful to read. It’s dense and took me months to get through but it’s so much fun that I read the last hundred pages with some sadness, knowing that it was approaching the end.

  What I liked about it was the sheer imaginative creation of so much colour and incident, such weird characters and a setting that brings out not only the founding myths of the USA, but also contemporary issues like racism, paranoid fantasy, imperfect science vs. popular culture. The stories of the increasingly powerful mechanical duck, or the fortune-telling English dog, mysterious palaces in the forest, or the subterranean world are so numerous that by the end I just wanted to go back and check them out again. Some are so striking that they stay with me, such as the confusion and loss felt when the calendar was reformed to eliminate 11 days. But this is a book that academics can (and do) study to understand the meaning of the details, while casual readers can read just for the pleasure of the stories. You can get hung up on the details and the archaic language, but it’s more fun just to enjoy it as a fireside story with plenty of incident.

  It is genuinely comic to read, including satirical portraits of English, American and South African class cultures. And yet it comes together in a touching way as Mason and Dixon work out their antagonisms and develop a kind of closeness and friendship. One of the themes that comes through all the mad detail is how the working friendship helps two very different men find connections with their societies and their families in tumultuous times.

  For me, the key theme and the central story in the book is the founding of America, so-called. The form of the book itself, written in a faux-18^th century style, is a first person narrative of someone who claims to have been at some of the central events leading up to the American Revolution. Yet his story is obviously made up to entertain his listeners so that he can stay on living comfortably with his relatives. He makes up absurd and impossible, but highly entertaining, incidents involving Franklin, Washington and other Americans, as well as their British colonizers. I love the idea that the political discussions of the time all take place in coffee houses so thick with smoke that people cannot see each other and are intoxicated with caffeine, nicotine and alcohol – they don’t know who they are talking to or what they are talking about. They best political strategies don’t come from the intellectuals, but from pirates planning insurrection in the warehouses along the New York harbour. The talk of liberation comes in a society in which casual racism, slavery and aboriginal massacres are endemic. This points to the myths that underlie the foundations of any nation, and the unreliable but convenient stories that they are based on. It’s good that it is Pynchon, a respected American intellectual, who shows this, because it would be unwelcome from many other voices. It is curious that the theme, which to me seems so significant, has not shown up in any of the reviews I’ve read of the book. I think it’s also interesting that Pynchon ends the story on a meditative tone with Dixon’s family populating the new country and giving up the old country with its ghosts. Yes, it seems to conclude, there’s a lot of ridiculous storytelling going on, but let’s acknowledge that and get on with making a good life.

  In the end, I enjoyed this book so much that I look forward to reading more Pynchon, whom I have not read for decades. But first I’ve decided to read a real 18^th Century picaresque, Tom Jones. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf in a lovely leather binding of 800 pages, so it too will take some time to read, but there I look forward to another extended visit to the 18^th Century. 

If the Dead Rise Not

Philip Kerr, 2010, (June 2015)

This book is awful. Having read Philip Kerr’s first three novels in the anthology edition, Berlin Noir, I knew what to expect, so I was not really surprised that I didn’t enjoy this book. It had the same things that I liked and hated in the first novels, and I chose to read it because there are some things I like in it.

  Kerr’s historical description is detailed, concrete and sufficiently accurate factually that I’m willing to credit him with likely getting the life details right. So if you want to know how one negotiates life under a fascist bureaucracy, and that’s the sort of thing I am interested in, then there is a reason to read Kerr’s fiction. Of course, Kerr’s protagonist, Bernie Gunther, does much more than negotiate everyday life – he’s kicked out of the police for his support of the liberal goals of the Weimar Republic, but feels compelled as a hotel detective to look into the criminals in the hotel who are profiteering with the Nazi government. Under a tough exterior, he has an honest heart, but one he has to hide to survive the corrupt times. His frequently cynical, sarcastic comments can be read as an expression of the conflict he feels.

  Between the seedy bars and Alexanderplatz police station, the Olympic construction site and the Adlon Hotel, he covers a lot of Berlin, and later covers similar ground in Cuba. He shows the petty and major corruption, the ambitions and the avoidances that Berliners adopt to get by or to profit under the violent, anti-Semitic and racist nationalism of the Nazis. He paints a picture that is vile and gritty with no sense of hope except to just get through until things change. I imagine that that’s how a lot of people did try to survive.

  Unfortunately, Kerr overdoes the historical detail, so some passages read as if he found some interesting descriptions in his research, and wants to cram it all in. Curious as I am about the period, I don’t need exaggerated architectural description to get the point.

  What I don’t like about this book, and the earlier ones I read, are the clumsy, overdone “hardboiled” style in which it is narrated. Kerr adopts the most obvious characteristics of Raymond Chandler’s style without restraint, and embellishes them with grotesque exaggeration and unrelenting sexism. Written in the first-person voice of narrator Bernie Gunther, it’s inescapable and it’s too much. Where Chandler used a sarcastic wit to illuminate his character’s point of view, Kerr turns the style into caricature. By half way through the book, I began to skip the satirical asides because they added nothing to the characters or the storyline.

  Kerr’s characters are little better. They are stereotypes with little depth or development. When they do something unexpected, rather than think that there is a new side to a complex personality, I just think, where did that come from? The relationship that develops between Gunther and the American hotel guest merely seems absurd and unbelievable. The introduction of a string of American characters seems more of an attempt to build up readership in the USA rather than anything necessary to the storyline.

  I started the book as a light alternative to the fairly heavy novel I had been reading, but it’s not light or a pleasure to read. So I’m done with Philip Kerr. I’ll learn about Germany under the Nazis elsewhere.

The Paying Guests

Sarah Waters 2014 (May 2015)

I was not really taken by this book, although there are a lot of good things about it.

  It has Sarah Waters’ characteristic awareness of the roles of women and class in society, with its focus on an upper middle class lesbian in 1920s England. Written as an interior narrative, it shows the point of view of Frances, an anti-war lesbian of a privileged middle class, supporting her mother in reduced circumstances after the death of her brothers in the War and her father in its aftermath. She feels the personal loss, but also the social changes that the war has brought to England. Both of these changes are reflected in the fact of having to do her own housekeeping and take in boarders after she and her mother can no longer afford servants to maintain their large house. Nevertheless, she expects and receives deference from lower orders such as the police, and is conscious of the difference between her family and her boarders, who are of the rising “clerk class” but who are rooted in the even lower retail trades and manual workers.

  Waters also gives a strong sense of time and place, with Frances and her mother struggling to adapt to their restricted financial and social circumstances. From Waters’ concrete details of housekeeping chores, I can appreciate much more the work that goes into maintaining a household before modern appliances, and Waters’ concrete details, such as the path to the outdoor privy, will stay with me. She also shows clearly the life of a young educated woman living in London in the early-1920s. The language and point of view are an insight to the times, and seem to me to be quite apt.

  Waters also turns around the conventional police novel by showing the events of an investigation from the point of view of one of the subjects of the investigation. While the police do their slow, careful work, Frances knows what the truth is, and she agonizes about what they will discover. Her emotions as she is part of the investigation, and then in the subsequent trial are drawn out in exquisite detail – so detailed that the reader can feel the tedium and the crazy desperation of just wanting to get through it and waiting for it to end.

  It’s interesting to see Waters’ portrayal of the Frances’ life as a lesbian – she feels no moral ambiguity, just some natural fearfulness. She knows the social consequences of coming out in the 1920s, as well as the condemnation she will face from her mother. Nevertheless, she secretly maintains her friendship with a former lover and her lover’s new partner, and when she is drawn to her new upstairs boarder, she joyfully seduces and initiates her into an emotional and sexual relationship. The detailed interior description of Frances’ growing connection is very natural, with its hopes and contradictions.

  Unfortunately, I just did not find Frances a very interesting person. The story was fine as long as it was showing new details about the society of post-war London. But the despondent moping as Frances tries to figure out what to do about her relationship and then the investigation begin to seem endless. She struggles within her limited point of view, but sees no way out (probably a realistic assessment). We never get to see anyone else’s point of view, which might restore some interest. With a few hundred pages to go, I was counting down to the end of the book, hoping something would happen to pick things up. Possibly Waters wanted her readers to experience the frustration and tedium of Frances’ situation, but it just gets to be too much, for me at least.

  I like Sarah Waters, and will read her again, but I don’t think I could go back to this book.