Tag: books

Book review: American Tabloid

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American TabloidAmerican 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” →

Book review: The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

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The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of WomenThe 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” →

Book review: Inherent Vice

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Inherent ViceInherent 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” →

Book review: Amrita

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AmritaAmrita 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” →

Book review: The Watch Tower

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The Watch TowerThe 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” →

Book review: Hello America

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Hello AmericaHello 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” →

Book review: The Father Of Locks

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The Father Of Locks The Father Of Locks by Andrew Killeen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Another day, another Orientalist mystery! Andrew Killeen’s book is almost custom-made for the Dedalus imprint, in its exploration of lugubrious living and the nuances of history. Set in Baghdad (largely) around 800AD, this is a very descriptive tale of poetry, rivalry and rooting with its roots in reality. Most of the characters existed, and a glossary at the end of the book provides potted histories of those mentioned.

The problem with this book is – like The One Thousand and One Nights which Killeen claims inspires him – its labyrinthine nature. The plot itself is pretty simple, really: it’s a detective story with the titular Father of Locks (Abu Nuwas, an historical poet who – here, at least – proves Byron and Shelley didn’t have the only dibs on dissolute living) and his narrator-cum-sidekick Ismail attempting to solve murders and mysteries. Except the plot is often shuffled off to the side for a round of storytelling and romance – affairs of the zabb, at least, as Killeen coyly styles the multiple penile peregrinations of the piece. Continue reading “Book review: The Father Of Locks” →

Book review: The Arabian Nightmare

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The Arabian NightmareThe Arabian Nightmare by Robert Irwin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’d been meaning to read this for a long time. When I first began to read some stranger fiction – the first time I discovered the Dedalus imprint, I think – I saw The Arabian Nightmare recommended highly. It’s one of those books which has attained cult status – and pretty reasonably, too, given that it’s part sex manual, part spy story, part meditation on dreams and part talking-animal tale, all wrapped in the patterned carpets of Orientalism and stuffed inside a shaggy dog.

I suspect it’s one of those books which, by dint of the enormously evocative descriptions and obviously well-researched background – Irwin is a scholar and Cairo is certainly in his bailiwick – dazzles readers and seems, like the rope trick, to be something more than it is.

It is enjoyable. I can’t deny that. The beginning of the work creates atmosphere as quickly as anything I’ve read. But it doesn’t maintain interest as well as the narrative seems to think it does. Continue reading “Book review: The Arabian Nightmare” →

Book review: The Driver’s Seat

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The Driver's Seat The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Muriel Spark is pretty much synonymous with strange stories, so it’s unsurprising that The Driver’s Seat, a 1970 novella billed as a “metaphysical shocker” is deeply creepy.

It concerns the last holiday of Lise, a suicidal and lonely woman takes a holiday to an unnamed “southern” country (swarthy blokes, student riots, a couple of languages, old architecture) with the intention of being murdered. Not of killing oneself – that would be a little easy. But of becoming a murder victim.

I’m not actually giving anything away, here. The plan is revealed very early on, though we’re left guessing how and who until the very end, much as in a Christie work. Except Christie never worked macrobiotic orgasm-fanciers into her prose. Continue reading “Book review: The Driver’s Seat” →

Book review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel

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The Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet: A NovelThe Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’d read a couple of Mitchell’s books many years ago, and it wasn’t until I picked this one up, looking for some transport reading that I realised (given its Japanese subject-matter) I was predisposed to liking it. The enjoyment it’s given has me kicking myself at leaving it on the shelf until now.

The four years of research required to create the book are well-spent; the historical verisimilitude is pretty much untouchable. Precision of detail is paramount, though it’s not forced down the reader’s throat. The Sakoku era – when foreign contact was forbidden, only ended with the arrival of Commodore Perry’s ‘Black Ships’ – is faithfully rendered. The outpost of Dejima – the only place trade was available, near Nagasaki – is brought to life without the distancing one usually finds in novels writing about the past. Some of the island’s denizens are a little more stereotypical than you’d imagine – especially the wanking monkey named after William Pitt – but nothing breaks the mood. Continue reading “Book review: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel” →