A curmudgeon writes.
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
After an intervening couple of decades I revisited Sagan’s novel. I remembered enjoying it greatly when I read it in my teens, and hoped the same memories of cut-glass oceans and desultory fucking-for-effect conniving would hold true.
They didn’t. Continue reading “Book review: Bonjour Tristesse”
Deep Kyoto: Walks by a number of contributors
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The offshoot of a blog, this book is a collection of loosely-planned walks through the ancient city (and former capital) with a variety of themes. There’s plenty of history, sure – you can’t really avoid it in a place like Kyoto – but there’s also a lot of personal history brought to bear, here. (Sometimes, a little too much – some of the writers’ digressions aren’t as amusing as they presumably believe, but I accept this may just be a personality clash.) Continue reading “Book review: Deep Kyoto: Walks”
Setting Free the Bears by John Irving
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I first read this book when I was about 14. It seemed amazing back then, as it was an excursion into history and kinda-sorta sex and the road and motorcycles and that whole enthusiastic, Dickens-hipster thing. Yeah, daddy-o.
The problem about reading it with an older eye is that it hasn’t aged particularly well. The text is clunky and overcomplex, the characters pretty one-dimensional – Gallen is basically a big-hipped R. Crumb figure with less intrigue – and the whole atmosphere is a little too keep-on-truckin’ to be read without cringing. Continue reading “Book review: Setting Free the Bears”
Blood’s A Rover by James Ellroy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, JFK, MLK and RFK were all dead by the time this book began, so I was wondering where it would go. Who else could be offed? Thankfully, foreign casino insurgency and a gem heist gone to shit allow Ellroy the chance to work some of his favourite characters (requisite dirty cops, Sal Mineo and Sonny Liston, mysterious double agents, the Mob) into something which isn’t quite as weighed down by history as the preceding books in the trilogy.
The gem heist – and where the gems lead – provides a neat small-scale tableau to provide a break from the Nixon and Hoover machinations. As with the search for rogue drug dealer Durfee in a previous volume, the smaller crime has echoes in the larger political sphere. This time around though, it seems more – human. Continue reading “Book review: Blood’s A Rover”
American Tabloid by James Ellroy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The first in another history-minded trilogy, American Tabloid unpicks the hem of the myth of Camelot while keeping an eye on the main chance. The prose is as jacked-up as half the characters, and it moves forward with a terrifying urgency.
Like his other works, there’s a lot of character specificity and a lot of fine detail evoked. But the Underworld USA trilogy manages to more convincingly convey a sense of momentousness, of this-is-probably-how-it-happened. But it ain’t pretty.
Reading this book is a bit like being repeatedly punched in the face by History. You know something has happened, and you know it’s important and will leave lasting traces for the future. Though you can’t help but feel as if Events had taken you out to an alley and kicked shit out of you. Continue reading “Book review: American Tabloid”
The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women by James Ellroy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hard on the heels of my reading of My Dark Places comes this, a second exploration of the role of women in author James Ellroy’s life.
You probably won’t want to read it if you’re sick of jacking-off-and-peeping stories. Because – though they’re not as explicitly described as elsewhere – they’re here. That and darkened-room fantasising. The short book reeks of control; of others, of self, and the lack thereof.
Ideally, this should be read in concert with My Dark Places. That book explains the importance of the murder of Ellroy’s mother, and its effect on his life. The Hilliker Curse moves past the mechanics of the death and into how his relationships with women have played out over the years. True, his mother is looming, forever, Continue reading “Book review: The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women”
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Soon to be a film – something I suspected I’d never hear in relation to a Pynchon work – Inherent Vice is a druggy, super-California mess that’s somehow super-endearing. It’s Pynchon’s version of a noir potboiler, seen through the tinfoil hat of paranoia which accompanies most of his other work.
The Crying of Lot 49 was my introduction to the writer’s what-the-fuck-is-going-on? style of writing, and I’m happy to say Inherent Vice is another in the same vein. It’s shorter than Gravity’s Rainbow but feels as large. Like most of Pynchon’s work there’s a lot going on here. It’s a bit like sticking your head in a cannon loaded with cultural ephemera and conspiracy theories. Continue reading “Book review: Inherent Vice”
Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Amrita is much longer than other Yoshimoto books I’ve read. It’s also the most scattered and least considered of her works. Magical realism and urban observation combine in the story about a memory-loss victim and her family – most notably a dead, beautiful sister and an uncanny-child little brother – which features some nice locales but nothing which stays with the reader afterwards.
The characters created are fairly detailed and clearly defined. But I found it difficult to muster interest in their fates, apart from the younger brother. Indeed, locations seem to be more of interest: the transformative nature of a change of location has more oomph than anything the cast goes through.
Elements of the work venture into supernatural territory. Continue reading “Book review: Amrita”
The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This isn’t really a book I can say I enjoyed. It’s masterfully written, yes, and lives up to the forgotten treasure billing Harrower’s works have been given – but Jesus, it’s a difficult thing to get through.
Set in ’40s Sydney, it’s a story of constriction. Two sisters are marooned by their couldn’t-give-a-shit mother. An arranged marriage with an older man seals their fates, robbing them of educational opportunities and forcing them into servitude in the suburbs. Add in some on-again, off-again alcoholism and some domestic violence and misogyny and you’ve all the making of a Real Fun Time. Not. Continue reading “Book review: The Watch Tower”
Hello America by J.G. Ballard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’d be a bit much to expect J.G. Ballard to write something cheerful. So here we are in disaster-town again: a North America abandoned after peak oil and climate change joined forces to ruin the landscape and the economy both. The world is a fractured, largely socialist or communist environment (you know, trains running on time, bad soup, joyless sex in afternoons off from suitably pro-community factory jobs) which keeps people alive but only just.
That kind of world. Good job there’s a steam-powered excursion to North America on the cards, hoping to explore the abandoned continent and repopulate it. Continue reading “Book review: Hello America”
