books – Page 33 – Yeah nah.

Book review: My Life As A Fake

May 28, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFez1 Comment

My 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

May 20, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

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: Francis Bacon in Your Blood

May 17, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you picked up Michael Peppiatt’s book looking for a biography of Bacon, you’re going to be disappointed. Yes, there are plenty of facts here. But no, Bacon-biog isn’t the point. This is a book about Peppiatt, himself. Actually, it’s more of a Venn diagram about how the writer’s life intersects with Bacon, though I must admit I am picturing such a diagram being loosely sketched on canvas by Francis himself, using the bin lid he kept for such circumference-related purposes.

To be fair, this book isn’t sold as an artist biography. Peppiatt has already written one of those, Continue reading “Book review: Francis Bacon in Your Blood” →

Book review: Drive

May 6, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Drive by James Sallis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

He just drives. The guy. Here. Driver. Just drives. We know this because it’s his name – he has no other. Having one name is badass, having no name (and a gritty backstory) is superbadass and generally an indicator that you’re at the intersection of pulp and noir.

James Sallis’s slight novel is wonderful. It’s economical, but sprinkled with ten-buck words. It’s a world away from the sci-fi that began his career, and though it’s a modern work, seems to be written under the influence of the best sort of taut technique: Thompson and Cain, say. Interlocking jobs (criminal or otherwise) and lives, none of them pristine, tell a largely criminal narrative, though without any sort of opprobrium. If anything, the action taking place in the Hollywood sun say just that This Is How It Is, and nothing more. It’s nihilism with better catering. Continue reading “Book review: Drive” →

Book review: Brighton Rock

April 29, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFez1 Comment

Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d known about Brighton Rock for ages – a combination of general awareness of Graham Greene and the Morrissey song ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ but I’d never read it. Now that I have, I can see why someone like the Smiths frontman would namecheck it: it’s a sordid, grimy window on the thirties, a look at the world of tough men and the children who wish to become them. Rough trade under the garish lights of a seaside town, immortalised in fiction and iconic film.

This is the second Greene I’d read (The Third Man being the much shorter first) and it pulled me in from the outset. I’m intrigued about the rest of his work, now. The story’s pretty simple: a murder is committed by Pinkie, a sociopathic pup with distinct lady problems. Ida, a voluminous seeker of good times, takes umbrage at the foul play she suspects has befallen a brief acquaintence, and decides to root out the truth. What follows is a sea mist-shrouded examination of the mental life of both the pursuer and the pursued, framed by the prospect of turf takeover from larger interests. Continue reading “Book review: Brighton Rock” →

Book review: The Magic Cottage

April 23, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

The Magic Cottage by James Herbert
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I recently spent some time in hospital, and thought this work might make a good companion. From the blurb, it suggested a zippy, not thoroughly taxing read. Fair enough, I thought: I’ll zip through it while waiting for day surgery and that will be that. Popcorn consumed.

So somehow, it’s ten days later and I’ve only just finished it. And why? Because I kept feeling like I had to flog myself onwards toward a finish line that wasn’t really worth it when I got over it.

Ugh. Continue reading “Book review: The Magic Cottage” →

Book review: Girl in a Band: A Memoir

April 10, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The title of Kim Gordon’s autobiography is a neat reduction of how she’s been interpreted by media outlets and observers for years: the girl in the most apparently sausagefesty of bands, the fringe-and-pedals, truculent beast that was Sonic Youth. It is, naturally, reductive, a fiction pushed by those who’d copy to file, or those whose musical penates was the Kim and Thurston power couple.

The quote on the back of the book – pulled from its instant-in first chapter – best describes the artist’s feelings of being observed, categorised.

Onstage, people have told me, I’m opaque or mysterious or enigmatic or even cold. But more than any of those things, I’m extremely shy and sensitive, as if I can feel all the emotions swirling around a room. And believe me when I say that once you push past my persona, there aren’t any defenses there at all.

Of course, I’m guilty of this reduction. I like to defend this with the acknowledgement that Sonic Youth are a band I seem to ‘get’ more now that I’m older: I had some albums when I was growing up, but I always seemed to miss something, that there was a big secret that I couldn’t understand, an enjoyment others had that I couldn’t grasp. I couldn’t get a read on Gordon: she seemed like she took no shit, from my limited pre-internet knowledge, and that probably frightened me, as teenage-terrible as I was parsing women. Continue reading “Book review: Girl in a Band: A Memoir” →

Book review: Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan

April 1, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFez4 Comments

Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan by Alex Kerr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Originally published in 1993, this revised edition of Lost Japan is Alex Kerr’s examination of aspects of Japan that are slowly disappearing. It’s an exploration – admittedly by an outsider, though a long-term resident – of the parts of Japanese culture which, after hundreds of years, are vanishing in the wake of economic miracles and crashes, and with the rise of technology. (Kerr would later write about different forms of downturn in Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan, though that work is concerned with modern declination.)

Kerr‘s an interesting fellow, and the aspects of his biography woven into the book’s structure intrigue: born in Maryland, he grew up in Yokohama, and studied such that he could be thrust back into Japanese life. Organised Japanese studies seemed to disagree with him, so he struck out on his own, on a path which led to a love of art (and time as a dealer), associations with Texan developers, and guardian angel for a house in the Iya Valley – as well as figurehead for a trust designed to fight the effects of depopulation in rural areas. Continue reading “Book review: Lost Japan: Last Glimpse of Beautiful Japan” →

Book review: Levels of Life

March 5, 2016August 15, 2019 CaptainFezLeave a comment

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This, a short book in three parts, is as accomplished a work as you’d expect from a long-term, much-awarded novelist such as Julian Barnes. It’s a meditation on flight (ballooning, in particular), photography and grief, and while the first two sections of the book focus on historical figures’ experience of those areas, the final third is about Barnes’ own grief, over the death of his wife.

The first two sections, detailing loves and legs lost in the pursuit of amour and altitude – with a cast including Sarah Bernhardt, Fred Burnaby and Félix Tournachon – are well written but also somewhat disconnected from the final chapter. They fit together well enough, and the lack of a complete mesh is forgivable given that this is writing informed by deep grief, but sometimes the paths from start to end seem a little forced. The turn of phrase are still effortlessly polished; describing his wife’s illness as “37 days from diagnosis to death” is brilliantly economical, indicative of the rapidity with which death can make itself known. Continue reading “Book review: Levels of Life” →