It seems I am eternally late in writing up these reviews. I would like to say that’s down to my overwhelming desire to read as opposed to my overwhelming draw towards lethargy, but you and I both know that’d be a lie.
So to make up for the time between posting – admittedly there’s been trips away and lots of work in between – I’m giving you ten reviews today. Not sure if that qualifies as a punishment for me or for you, but let’s embark on this journey together.
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams.
My rating: five stars.
Bucking the Cool Guy Literary Trend, I decided that the first Williams novel I read would not be Stoner but instead Butcher’s Crossing, his demolition of the myth of modern America wrapped in the trappings of a western.
The book begins with Andrews, a young man in search of adventure: breaking with his college education on the East Coast, he heads West and meets up with Miller, a buffalo hunter, whose hunt he bankrolls on the condition that he becomes one of the party.
His half-closed eyes nearly recaptured the sharp engravings he had seen in books, in magazines, when he was at home in Boston; but the thin black lines wavered upon the real grass before him, took on color, then faded. He could not recapture the strange sensations he had had, long ago, when he first saw those depictions of the land he now was seeking.
We know from the outset that this isn’t going to go well. Andrews is warned off his plan, with predictions that he’ll change for the worse. But his desire to see for himself is resolute, and he proceeds on a path that will stretch into bitter, vividly described winters. What ensues is truly harrowing, in an economically, beautifully described kind of way.
It came to him that he had sickened and turned away because of his shock at seeing the buffalo, a few moments before proud and noble and full of the dignity of life, now stark and helpless, a length of inert meat, divested of itself, or his notion of its self, swinging grotesquely, mockingly, before him. It was not itself; or it was not that self that he had imagined it to be. That self was murdered; and in that murder he had felt the destruction of something within him, and he had not been able to face it. So he had turned away.
The book is an exercise in understatement, of words precisely serving their purpose. It’s a thrifty evocation of all that’s terrible in the desires of men, and in their overestimation of their abilities. Change is unavoidable, but change for the worse, so clearly foreshadowed, is almost tragic when it comes. The main motivation of this story, as with the overhunting of buffalo, with the decline of communities on the cusp of humanly tolerable locales, is hubris and it is fearsome.
He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.
A remarkable piece of work.
Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean.
My rating: three stars.
A 1960s airport novel with Cold War drama? Sign me up! Here, MacLean gives it his best Tom Clancy and presents a story involving espionage, the then-popular concern about what life on a nuclear-powered submarine was like (let alone how then navigated below pack ice), a mysteriously gutted weather station adrift on a floe, and the locked-room mystery of a saboteur and murderer on the loose.
It’s a lot. It’s also full of humour and attitudes that haven’t aged incredibly well, though the author’s certainly batting better than Ian Fleming’s work at this point.
Regardless of faintly dodgy takes, the novel cracks along. Disbelief needs to be cryogenically preserved to get through some of the implausible aspects of the book, but in terms of ACTION! and ADVENTURE! there’s something almost refreshingly innocent about the events and geopolitical apprehension revealed here. It does, however, exactly what you’d expect a novel of its vintage to do, ratcheting tension no matter how improbable the devices used. I enjoyed it mindlessly, which is an occasional, but distinct pleasure.
Rumour (and a couple of biographies) have it that the filmed-in-Cinerama version of this book is what Howard Hughes had running on a loop in his Mormon-attended stronghold towards the end of his life. After I’d finished reading the book, I figured I’d check out the film to see what drew him in. Let’s just say that Ernest Borgnine’s Russian accent would not provide enough incentive to see this twice, let alone continually unto death.
(Mind you, I’m not on truly heroic amounts of morphine, so I assume my milage is different.)
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.
My rating: five stars.
The Troubles – conflict in Northern Ireland that were rooted in British colonisation long before but which came to a head between the 1960s and late 1990s – were fucking awful. It’s perhaps the closest-to-home example of British colonisation’s impacts having a daily impact, as events spread to the British mainland in both political and practical manner, with home rule and car bombs both making headlines. It’s a conflict with a long shadow, with whiffs of ultranationalism, class struggle and a sense that keeping quiet – even to death – was a non-negotiable condition for those living in the area, at least if they wanted to keep living (and no matter their side).
Tranquilliser use was higher in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. In some later era, the condition would probably be described as post-traumatic stress, but one contemporary book called it ‘the Belfast syndrome’, a malady that was said to result from ‘living with constant terror, where the enemy is not easily identifiable and the violence is indiscriminate and arbitrary’.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s book takes this cone of silence, this omerta approach and uses it to examine the Troubles, taking as its starting point the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville from her home by the Provisional IRA. McConville had been suspected of being a tout, an informer, and was later killed and buried on a beach, with her body not found for three decades.
What led to and what resulted from this abduction and murder are explored in a mixture of biography and history. Importantly, Keefe notes that nothing within is fictionalised: quotes are direct, there is no internal narrative inserted to make a point. The book focuses on the lives of Dolours Price, Brendan Hughes and Gerry Adams, using their experiences to present a history of the Troubles as a whole, including hunger strikes, violence, the peace process and the role an American university played in capturing oral histories for sectarian events that would otherwise have gone to the grave.
For all the chaos, the number of people actually killed in the Troubles was initially quite low: in 1969, only nineteen people were killed, and in 1970, only twenty-nine. But in 1971, the violence accelerated, with nearly two hundred people killed. By 1972, the figure was nearly five hundred.
While I still do not know enough about the intricacies of Irish history, this book provides an excellent view of a particular point in time. Growing up in Australia (and consuming a lot of British culture secondhand, thanks to the ABC of my youth) I was familiar with most of the key players and had a little context, but the book more fully illuminates the actions that went with names like Paisley and Price. My understanding of IRA splits, of kill squads given free rein, of home rule and protest have greatly increased, but only to the extent that my ignorance now has some limits. This is an area that it behooves anyone with an interest to explore, and this book is an excellent starting point.
(The book takes its title from a Seamus Heaney poem, which you can read here.)
Gai-Jin by James Clavell.
My rating: four stars.
You can tell when I’m feeling overwhelmed and need some kind of escape. Generally, it’s when I pull out a James Clavell novel and fuck off to mass-market worldbuilding for a bit of a break from, well, everything .
Thus it was with Gai-Jin.
While the novel is chronologically the third in Clavell’s Asian Saga, it was the last novel he published. It takes place in 1862, about 20 years after Tai-Pan, and is more than 1100 pages of what’s essentially Bodice-Rippers-For-Dudes literature, full of BIG EMOTIONS, action, lots of I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR! exchanges and, er, the succession planning of trading houses.
‘God rot all bastards,’ Dmitri said pointedly.
What we get is a layered story that constantly switches between the world of the foreigners, the titular gai-jin in their settlement in Yokohama (and by extension the machinations of world governments and houses of trade as they seek to colonise the globe) and different factions of Japanese life: those who are pro-Shōgun and those militarist shishi who are pro-Emperor. The worlds intertwine (helped in part by a lot of scenes set in brothels of more or less repute) and violence – presented here in a fictionalised version of the Namamugi Incident and the Anglo-Satsuma War that followed it – is never far away .
While you and I both know that this is essentially a novel written by a literary weaboo, it is comprehensively detailed and incredibly compelling. I flew through the thing, and while I know it’s hardly high literature, it’s enjoyable as hell, giving widescreen reward for a modicum of investment.
Session 9: The Official Novelisation by Christian Francis.
My rating: three stars.
I remember when I was small I used to read novelisations of films. I think I first learned about Gothic architecture from the book wrung out of the Ghostbusters script, and I certainly remember being freaked out (again!) by the write-up of Mola Ram’s heart-plucking number from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
I honestly can’t say that I’ve noticed all too many of these tie-in editions from then until now, though I suppose they have existed. But my interest was piqued when I discovered one was being written for 2001’s Session 9, one of my favourite creepy movies.
(Also how is it now almost 25 years old? I am dust etc etc.)
The film – now a bit of a cult favourite – is a small delight. A great cast (David Caruso giving a “fuck you!” line read for the ages and PETER GODDAMN MULLAN amongst others) in an eerie set-up (the now mostly demolished Danvers State Hospital) with a tension that builds throughout. One of my best friends worked on set, and I remember receiving some photos he took while exploring, and the story that a lot of the secret of the movie’s set dressing was this is stuff that was already here.
It’s a great movie, and I suggest you find it if you like low-key spook stuff.
Months later our lead actor Peter Mullan would relate having the same experience when we were shooting Session 9 here. He admitted to me that between takes he would often place his ear against the walls. And somehow they spoke. Of the dramas. Of the tragedies. Of the loneliness of the countless lives that passed through here. He said this sensation informed his performance in the film. I believe it.
The book is a pretty faithful adaptation of the story of the film, which focuses around the slow disintegration of a group of hazmat-clad remediation workers as they try to get their job finished under increasing pressure. Forces are conspiring to make this more difficult, and it’s unclear what – or who? – those forces might be.
Without revealing too much, the book takes a bit more of a definitive stance on things. It’s different to the film, to some degree, and while it’s not bad, I am curious as to why some of the narrative choices were made, especially where they run counter to some of the things that made the film great.
That said, I am fully supportive of This Kind Of Thing. It’s an addition to the Session 9 canon, features some insight into the making of the film, and reminds me that I’ve got to watch it again, soon. That’s good enough for me.
Death Spell by David Sodergren.
My rating: four stars.
I’m not going to lie, when goofy horror beckons, I pay attention. David Sodergren‘s works have brought me a lot of curiously enjoyable squick. I’m happy to be listed in Death Spell, his latest, as a Patreon supporter, as it means a) he gets a couple of bucks and b) I get some hectic reading matter.
Death Spell is Sodergren’s attempt to write a truly extreme book. He didn’t think his works were all that gory, but splatterpunk is the brush he’s usually tarred with. This being the case, he decided to try “to write something utterly disgusting with no redeeming social value”.
Ron righted himself and looked at Barry in the mirror. Dressed in a freshly laundered — and very expensive — suit, Barry wore the smug grin of a man who hadn’t recently eaten thirteen worms.
He succeeded. What we get is the story of Ron, a man who, though witchcraft, manages to become incredibly rich and influential, kind of like Rupert Murdoch if he was even newer money, and without the ameliorating effect of well received Simpsons cameos. Ron’s daughter is in love with a movie star who’s not in love with her, so he does what anyone with a private jet and more money than is sensible would do: he takes her to the magician who gave him his wealth and asks for his daughter’s desires.
“I, uh, need more shamen.”
“Shamans,” said Edgar.
“What?”
“The plural of shaman is shamans, not shamen.”
It all sounded the same to Ron over the phone.
“Okay, whatever. I need more shamans. As many as you can round up.”
If you’re familiar with Sodergren, you can imagine that this goes badly. The novel pursues trigger-warning rabbit holes in the most gruesome fashion, but always with a kind of California sun sheen. It’s ludicrously violent and darkly funny, and scratches a particularly gross itch in a delightful manner.
You already know if you’re into this. Gore and boning? Manipulation and cack-handed strongmen? Shamans? If your answers are yes, yes and yes, you need this. You’ll feel a bit dirty when you’re finished, but that’s a small price to pay.
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht.
My rating: three stars.
This is the second Kracht I’ve read. The first, Imperium, was a tropical fantasy involving nudism and the creator of Vegemite. Eurotrash is a work of autofiction about a middle-aged man (who curiously resembles the author) who takes a road trip with his failing mother, largely in order to get her out of Zurich, a place the author describes as a depressing land of money, and in whose lake his mother will not swim because a friend’s ashes were spread there, and she can’t breast stroke without imagining ingesting her mate.
The road trip is meant to be a way for the narrator to break with the past and the sticky fingers it has on his present. There’s armaments money, Nazi esotericism and sexual abuse in the closet for both he and his mother, and while his mother seems focused only on her colostomy bag and on spending her money (reasonable items of attention), the narrator glumly moves through the alpine air with a certain Kendall Roy panache.
It was as if for decades I’d been trailing along the verge of enormous malice and was simply unable to make it out, as if within my assumptions lay only further assumptions, as if I’d been stricken by a disease of the morphic field, a cruel perfidy radiating from the past.
(I know, right?)
It’s a little reductionist to say this is a road trip novel (though it is) or a coming-of-age novel (though it is, if we take middle- and old- as the ages in question). But the use of a hackneyed plot manages to uncover some excellently tender revelations about dealing with one’s history and the pain that only those closest to you can inflict. The discomfort of child-parent interactions persists, and the love nobody can quite articulate is strongly felt.
This is a clever book by an incredibly clever writer and I feel stupid while reading it, but I’m not even mad about it. Worth your time.
Weston-Super-Nightmare by John Bowie.
My rating: two stars.
Much as with a book I read some time ago entitled Man, Fuck This House, the thing that drew me to this was the title. I’d like to say I was a sophisticated fellow whose brain was not tickled by punning or vaguely predictable wordplay, but here we are.
John Bowie’s book is the story of a bolthole in a shithole: a seaside town lifted from a Morrissey tune that’s home to Jimi, a formerly crim-adjacent ex-builder who has made a life playing covers in a pub he runs. seemingly happy to run out the clock with some rock and heavy drinking.
Jimi’s self-image was close to Bon Scott and Brian Johnson from AC/DC depending on how he felt at the time. When he was younger it was always Bon, now, mainly Brian. In reality, he was more Ray Winston in Sexy Beast.
Of course, this is rock-and-pulp, so Bad Shit inevitably happens. You see, outside criminal forces have their eyes on both Jimi’s town and his pub, and in truly Guy Ritchie style, they decide to make a play for the area. This Does Not Go Well for a bunch of people, on either side.
I read this book on a small plane from Orange to Melbourne, and it was perfect in that setting. Is it well written? Not particularly. Does it need an edit? Indubitably. Would this make a good Guy Ritchie film? Most definitely. Most people can probably wait for that to happen, but if you can’t, there’s worse ways of spending an hour or so.
Capital: All Volumes and The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
My rating: five stars.
I mean, what else was this going to get? There’s hardly another pair of works of philosophical and economic import that have either inspired so much change in the world or are still the targets of rampant criticism more than a century after their completion. Capital and The Communist Manifesto are supremely important, and while I approached them with a bit of side-eye (largely due to the fact I knew fuck all about Marx) I was amazed at how much like common sense a lot of it sounded.
(And also how bitchy a lot of his editor/sugar daddy Engels’ introductions and edits are. Seriously, a lot of the preambles to certain reprints of the works (included for their addition to understanding) is just that guy mercilessly slamming detractors from the top rope. Absolute carnage.)
It is important to note that there is a lot that I did not understand in these works. My highschool economics classes are a blur and literally the only term I can recall is ‘stagflation’. (It’s funny because I remember it because it sounds like a deer with a boner, but also because it’s accurately describing where the US is leading us right now.) So where the books get into the weeds about making the ground pay, or about the movement of money forms (which involves the narrated description of diagrams and formulae), the attention WANDERS. There is a lot of this, as this is a dense, dense text. Like me.
On the other hand, The Communist Manifesto is a clearly explained banger full of capitalist critique and clear-eyed desire for classlessness, universal education and self-realisation, amongst other things. Is it perfect? No. Is it workable? Perhaps? Is it better than a situation where one ketamine-huffing dude can take the whip hand with the world? Look, I’m going with a yes. . .
While this review isn’t offering a huge amount of critique, I want to underscore that getting through these works convinced me of a Marxist approach. (Though this is probably furthered more effectively by a book I’ll review in the next post I write, a Terry Eagleton examination of Marxist criticism.) Awakening is probably too cliched a phrase to use, but actually learning a bit about what Marxism and communism really mean has proved remarkably helpful in addressing the general malaise that seems to pervade The Way Things Are Generally Done Now, as well as putting right my definition of things that had really been misapprehensions. This is a big one to tick off the “gotta read” list, but it’s merely a starting point, for me. I certainly feel more interested, now, in reading more about the roots of our current situation, and of ways out of it.
(This enormous collection of works and ideas was narrated by Malk Williams, whose reassuring Northern tones absolutely eased the passage of some of Marx’s ideas into my brain. The failure of others to penetrate is due to my own gray matter, not his voice.)
The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place by Kate Summerscale.
My rating: four stars.
The murders at 10 Rillington Place have long been a morbid interest of mine, largely on the strength of the Richard Fleischer-directed film featuring John Hurt and Richard Attenborough in standout performances as hapless victim and dorky killer, respectively. It’s a claustrophobic experience that seems to encapsulate a very T. S. Eliot version of London: grim and close.
(I haven’t seen the Tim Roth/Samantha Morton adaptation of the story yet, but intend to do so soon.)
The true story that inspired the film is likewise grim: John Reginald Christie, a man who hid proof of his mail theft (while a postman) in the walls of his bedroom graduates to killing fellow boarders, sex workers, babies and his wife (amongst others) and hides the bodies around the house.
Happily, he was eventually caught. Unhappily, someone had already been wrongly executed for some of the murders. It was a shitshow, albeit a tawdry, driven-by-urges-and-necrophilia one.
Kate Summerscale’s work meets all the true-crime requirements as it retells the case, but its value really lies in the way the author attempts to situate the crimes within their milieu. This occurs through looking at the proceedings through the eyes of journalists F. Tennyson Jesse and Harry Proctor, and through examining cultural experiences of the time, including the coronation of Elizabeth II and pervasive fog. Instituted and acceptable racism is prodded, Winston Churchill suffers a decline (with attendant effects on politics) and Psycho is released. The role of backstreet abortions, the decline of the Empire and the long shadows of war are considered. And while none of these really illuminate the crimes themselves beyond what’s known – Summerscale is clear from the outset that the whole truth is likely to never be known – it does give excellent context to the horror.
The audiobook version of this work is narrated by Nicola Walker, which is just as excellent as one would expect. Ruth Evershed talking murder is strangely compelling. While I didn’t receive a huge amount of new information from The Peepshow, I had a good (?) time with it.
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Yeah nah. 
[…] This is otherwise known as the book Luke should’ve read instead of wading through Capital. (You know, the audiobook I reviewed last time.) […]