Tag: book review

Book review: My Life As A Fake

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My Life As A FakeMy Life As A Fake by Peter Carey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Take a 1940s literary hoax, Frankenstein, Rilke, Ezra Pound, literary journal editorship and the memsahib culture of Malaysia in the middle of last century and whip it all up with ulcerated legs and modish, society-shocking femmes fatales and you’ve pretty much got this entry in Carey’s oeuvre. My Life as a Fake is shorter than a lot of his other work – I think it’s probably on par with something like The Tax Inspector for length – but it packs a pretty hefty punch. Continue reading “Book review: My Life As A Fake” →

Book review: Strange Weather in Tokyo

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Strange Weather in Tokyo Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hiromi Kawakami has, in Strange Weather in Tokyo, written a fairly plot-free novel that charts the deepening friendship between Tsukiko, a late-30s woman, and Sensei, her teacher from years ago. They meet in a local bar – food and drink is key to the novel, bonding agents made of sake and mushrooms – and what follows is the story of pendulums going in and out of sync. Continue reading “Book review: Strange Weather in Tokyo” →

Book review: Aunts Up the Cross

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Aunts Up the CrossAunts Up the Cross by Robin Dalton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This slim work is a collection of reminiscences of Robin Dalton’s childhood in a now-vanished Kings Cross. It’s brief, but reads entertainingly well, a collision of multiculturalism and religion with crime, the theatre and a distinct feeling of familial uniqueness. There’s spinster aunts, simple neighbours and a passing parade in a house which feels more like a cabaret than a homestead – but it’s never stuck in a self-congratulatory gear.

It seems fairly standard with reviews of this work to mention that it’s singular in its opening. The vehicular death of a great aunt is the subject, and while this in itself is a reasonably dramatic thing to start with, it’s also worth quoting in its entirety as it highlights Dalton’s precise prose.

My great-Aunt Juliet was knocked over and killed by a bus when she was eighty-five. The bus was travelling very slowly in the right direction and could hardly have been missed by anyone except Aunt Juliet, who must have been travelling fairly fast in the wrong direction.

Continue reading “Book review: Aunts Up the Cross” →

Book review: Hebridean Sharker

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Hebridean SharkerHebridean Sharker by Tex Geddes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tex Geddes is very well-spoken. At least, his written voice is well-spoken. I suppose that I’d somehow expected him to write in a kind of Irvine Welsh-style rendition of accent, partially because his story is a deeply Scottish one – cold beauty and rough elemental life – and partially because he was, as far as I can ascertain, a mad old bastard. As you’d expect from a man who spent a lot of time shark-fishing, game-stalking, and convincing the British government that as the Laird of Soay, he needed a postal service goddamnit.

This link will take you to a write-up of his life on wikipedia, but I think it’s important to highlight the fact that he died while returning home from a bagpiping competition. Continue reading “Book review: Hebridean Sharker” →

Book review: My Lovely Ghost KANA, Volume 3

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My Lovely Ghost KANA, Volume 3.My Lovely Ghost KANA, Volume 3 by Yutaka Tanaka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This review is brief, as there’s not really all that much I can add to my previous two reviews of this manga. This, the third volume, brings to a close the supernatural romance’s run, and leaves us with little more knowledge than when we began.

The problem with My Lovely Ghost KANA is that there’s not much of an overarching story. Guy meets ghostgirl, they drink beer and shag, and the background of neither is explained very well. Continue reading “Book review: My Lovely Ghost KANA, Volume 3” →

Book review: Idoru

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Idoru.Idoru by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second in Gibson’s Bridge trilogy is much more enjoyable than the first. Well, scratch that – it’s enjoyable in a different way. I found it entertaining as one of its characters is demonstrably based on Australian standover man and garrulous toecutter Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, which immediately gave me a cultural ‘in’ on the work. But also of importance, for me, was its focus on pop fame, and the construction of identity.

As ever, Gibson is a thriller author concealed in tech. He’s adventure by stealth, Continue reading “Book review: Idoru” →

Book review: Virtual Light

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Virtual Light.Virtual Light by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So I’m continuing the Gibson jag I’m on. This one’s the first in the Bridge trilogy, another set of novels set in a future dystopia. This time, though, he’s more tuned into portraiture than hardware.

What’s interesting is that the tech which is so much a part of the fabric of the earlier Sprawl trilogy is here relegated to the background. The virtual light of the title ends up playing a role similar to that of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or the statue in The Maltese Falcon. They’re technical and advanced, yes, but they really exist to provide a motivation for the book’s events. It’s pretty refreshing to see something so fetishistic used for so base a narrative purpose. Continue reading “Book review: Virtual Light” →

Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive

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Mona Lisa Overdrive.Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third (and final) entry in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, the books which established the appearance of cyberspace. Really, however the internet is imagined, the roots of pop-culture’s interpretation are here. What I’ve found interesting reading these years later is how unimportant the cyberspace part of the stories are. Well, perhaps not unimportant – but less central than the rep would have you believe.

What’s important in these stories? People. Sure, information, hacking, breaking ice, constructed personalities and visualisation is a key draw – this is science fiction after all – but what pulls the attention is the personal side of the tale. Nowhere is Gibson’s portraiture more profound Continue reading “Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive” →

Book review: Climbers: A Novel

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Climbers: A Novel.Climbers: A Novel by M. John Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you were a climber and were expecting this to be some kind of literary version of The Eiger Sanction, then you’d probably be disappointed. But then, I don’t think M. John Harrison would care too much, given that many of the readers of this book were probably expecting it to be a sci-fi masterpiece, rather than some kind of Mike Leigh nightmare.

Out of print until recently (it was reissued in 2004) this 1989 novel is less about climbing and its community and more about growth – or the lack of it. Continue reading “Book review: Climbers: A Novel” →

Book review: The Sea

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The Sea.The Sea by John Banville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Banville’s Booker-winner is a novel which, like the tide, reveals itself by degrees. At once a recollection and a meditation, it’s a journal-styled examination of life after the loss of a partner.

Not a lot goes on in the novel in a narrative sense, but a lot is revealed about its focal character. Following his wife’s death, Max Morden revisits the location of childhood holidays – a seaside town not out of place in a Morrissey Every Day Is Like Sunday Continue reading “Book review: The Sea” →