Indignation

At the age of seventy-six Philip Roth remains as prolific as ever – perhaps even more so, as if time is running out on him to write all the books he has left within him. Indignation was his novel of last year, like Everyman before it, is a book of modest length – a mere 233 pages of generously sized type. I read it just as his latest novel (The Humbling) was published.

I often think of Roth being something of a latter-day Balzac – he deals with the big things in contemporary society, through the eyes of an individual, and his novels together paint an imporessively com=prehensive view of contemporary society and its fears and obsessions. Also like Balzac, I usually find that you need to perservere with the first fifty pages or so before the story really takes off. The perserverance is always well-rewarded in the end, of course.

Indignation, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. It gets stuck in from the very start, telling the extraordinary (yet mundane) tale of Marcus Messner, lying fatally wounded in a field hospital in Vietnam, as his life flashes before him. Messner is an intelligent , cultured and articulate young man with a glittering future ahead of him, but it is his very intelligence that lead him to make a series of seemingly minor, but ultimately disastrous decisions that lead inexorably to an early death. It is his indignation (the indignation of youth mixed with the pride, arrogance and self-righteousness of gifted youth) that is his downfall. His inability to see the wider picture, to see beyond the immediate is not an unusual youthful folly, but Messner, in his attempts to take control of his own destiny, merely succeeds in surrendering it to the wider forces of society and history. As with many of Roth’s works Indignation explores how the personal and everyday relates to the wider, monumental  force of history, and how one impacts on the other.

Tokyo Year Zero

David Peace, perhaps best known for The Red Riding Quartet, which was made into a successful TV series here in the UK and The Damned Utd, a fictional biography of Brian Clough which was made into a film, until recently lived in Tokyo. Tokyo Year Zero is the first in a trilogy of novels, the second of which has recently been published. Peace is difficult to categorise as a writer – he has been labelled as a writer of crime fiction, but it is the historical  setting(and relatively recent historical setting) of his novels that enable him to explore much larger issues.

Tokyo Year Zero is set in the years immediately following the end of the war in a Japan that is occupied, subdued and devasted (both physically and psychologically). Detective Minami is assigned to the task of solving a double murder. As his investigation progresses it becomes clear that they are hunting a serial killer who has been murdering young women over a number of years. However, the novel is not na conventional whodunnit. The serial killer is identified and arrested relatively early on in the novel. As Minami investigates the additional murders to gather evidence to force a confession from the killer (and so guarantee a death penalty verdict), he uncovers a corruption that is endemic in the police force and society as a whole. He too is implicated. What is portrayed is a society that has lost its moral foundation in its current state of subjugation, a nation of surviv0rs, each trying to recover from the horror of the war and come to terms with a collective and individual guilt. The more everyone tries to escape from the past beneath a series of assumed identities and pay-offs, the more impossible it is to do so. It is this vein of terror (not of the serial killer, but of history and society itself) that runs through this novel.

Peace also subverts the traditional chronology of the detective novel, as the post-war here-and-now is interspersed with extracts from Minami’s war journal, slowly revealing (or at least hinting at) the secrets and atrocities from which the detective is running. And Minami is no flawed, but likeable and moral hero. He is thoroughly dislikeable – a coward without principles, bent on self-preservation without regard to others, teetering on the verge of mental collapse. Writing in The Spectator, Andrew Taylor described it as a “book that travels deep into its very own heart of darkness” and the thematic parallels with Conrad’s novel are unmistakeable and Minami’s own cry of horror is just as loud. It is arguably a novel that could only have been written by someone who has immersed himself in Japanese culture for many years, but has simulktaneously retained an objective distance.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the much-anticipated final instalment of Swedish writer Stiegg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. The weekend it was published it was already sat on my bookshelf (having pre-ordered it) and I came across two reviews of it. The first was a panel of reviewers on Radio 4 (I think it might have been Front Row) and all them absolutely hated the novel, describing it as  slow, turgid, overwritten, unbelievable, etc. They speculated whether Larsson had had time to edit it properly before his untimely and sudden death. Of course, he had – Larsson died soon after this final volume was published. The second review was by Nick Cohen in The Observer, a fan of the first two books in the series and equally enthusiastic about this one too.

So, having enjoyed the first two novels, I started the third with a certain degree of trepidation. The novel begins where the second book ended with the young Elisabeth Salander in hospital recovering from gunshot wounds. I needn’t have worried – I found the novel to be a fitting ending to the trilogy. Once again it is a narrative whose complex plot winds around political intrigue, organised crime and espionage. Of course, it is rather rather unbelievable at times, but it is certainly not slow-paced.

Larsson no doubt saw himself writing in the same tradition as Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (who also died prematurely shortly after completed the last planned novel in the Martin Beck series), a left-wing journalist using the crime fiction genre to expose the contradictions, injustices and outrages in a society that is often held up as an example of a successful librael social democracy.

As for the reviewers, I agreed with Nick Cohen and I came to the conclusion that the worthy people on Radio 4 were literary snobs who neither liked nor generally read crime fiction.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Darkly Draeming Dexter is the first in Jeff Lindsay’s series of Dexter novels that have since been adapted into a successful TV series. The novel (and indeed all subsequent novels) are, on the one hand, straightforward whodunnits, but with one rather ingenious difference. Dexter, a police department pathologist, who – along with his police officer foster sister – solves the case of a serial killer on the loose, is in fact a serial killer himself. Dexter’s own homicidal tendencies are portrayed as an illness, brought about through a traumatic early childhood ordeal which has left him unable to relate emotionally to other human beings. Dexter’s occasional urges to go and murder someone are irresistible, but in spite of everything Dexter is basically a good person who has been brought up with a strong moral compass. So, powerless is he is to resist his urge to kill that he always makes sure that his victims are deserving (usually murderers and rapists themselves), and since he is ultimately a power for good, he is protected by those around him who share his secret, even though they are simultaneously upholding the law.

Of course, I could write about how this device illuminates the ambiguities and contradictions in our own moral positions and that of society at large. The device, however, allows for something else – it allows for comedy (and this is at times a deeply funny book, if you like ypour comedy dark) without trivialising the violence or turning the police into buffoons. It’s a clever premise that works well for Lindsay.

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story by Paul Auster is so short that it feels like something of a cheat including it on this list at all. In fact, unless I keep this review relatively short it runs the risk of being longer than the book itself. Well, not quite, but you get the idea!

I’ve read a fair bit of Paul Auster over the past few years and I’ve found a mixed reaction from others who have read him. Some find him a superb craftsman, an American Samuel Beckett; others find him pretentious. I can see the position of both camps and whilst I generally like Auster’s work, I do so not without reservation.

Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story tells the story of a writer – in the book he remains nameless, but we are meant to assume, I guess, that it is Auster himself – who receives a commission to write a christmas story for a magazine. The writer is unsure how to write about christmas without lapsing into cloying sentimentality. That is until he confides his problem to Auggie Wren, who works in the local tobacconist shop. Auggie tells the writer an unsentimental christmas story, which becomes the story the writer uses for his commission and the story within this short book. Whether the story is entirely unsentimental is rather debatable, but it is undoubtedly a simple, moving story, full of humanity. And this, I think, is where Auster is at his best – when he is describing the human relationships between ordinary people and their extraordinary lives, rather than the pseudo-Beckettian ramblings of In ther Scriptorium, for example.

Some years ago Auster participated in a radio project where he asked listeners to send in their stories of extraordinary incidences and coincidences. He read the results on air and published them in Tales of American Lives. It is a wonderfully humble testament to the extraordinariness of the everyday and Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story is in the same vein.

I should also mention the wonderful illustrations by ‘ISOL’ that accompany the story. If you have a spare half hour or so, it is worth spending it with this handsome little book.

 

The Resurrectionist

In early nineteenth century England resurrectionists were bodysnatchers, stealing the bodies of the recently dead to sell to universities and hospitals for anatomy classes. This was the ‘golden age’ of bodysnatching and for those who were prepared to take the risks, there were handsome profits to be made.

The Resurrectionist by Australian author James Bradley tells the story of Gabriel Swift who becomes apprecntice to an anatomist in London. Swift, training to become a surgeon, is set to work helping receive the bodies from the resurrectionists and then cleaning them and preparing them for dissection. But when he is dismissed he becomes a resurrectionist himself, eventually falling in with a group who murder their victims and sell their bodies, like the infamous Burke and Hare of Edinburgh. In fact there are many references to the story of Burke and Hare (including a character called Bourke). He finally finds himself transported to Australia where he attempts to build a new life under a new identity, only to find that he is unable to fully escape his past.

The novel, which is written mainly in short chapters, in the first person, almost like a diary. Bradley is a stylish writer for sure, although I found the pace of it rather slow until Swift becomes a bodysnatcher himself, at which point the narrative became much more gripping. The Resurrectionist, though, is a novel about resurrection in all its forms. Swift is constantly having to ressurect himself in order to survive (as an apprentice, as a bodysnatcher, as a murderer, as a convict, as an art teacher) and even at the end of the novel, when his new-found happiness is threatened by his past, there is a sense of optimism that he will resurrect himself once again. And what better place to do that than in Australia, which is portrayed as a land of resurrection, where people come to leave behind their past and be resurrected.

In the end, after a slightly shaky start, I found this a rather beautiful and poignant novel.

A Most Wanted Man

I have come to John le Carre a little late. When the BBC first dramatised le Carre’s Smiley novels, I must have been about twelve or thirteen, just a little too young for them. My brother, whi is three years older than me, read them voraciously while I stuck to the cosier world of Agatha Christie. In fact it was not until a couple of years ago when I picked up a Henry Porter novel that I read any spy fiction. Since then, I’ve read all the Porter books and, of course, William Boyd’s Restless. My friend Toby Kinsella, who sadly died rearlier this year, was a big le Carre fan and I bought A Most Wanted Man for him the day it came out in hardbook. He said it was a great book and finally I’ve got arounbd to reading it myself.

I am not sure I’d say that it was a great book. It’s certainly a well-written book – le Carre knows his craft – but it was less gripping than I expected it to be. In the first half of the novel it moves quickly, but then seems to slow down somewhat, only to pick up again in the last thirty pages or so. I expected something whose tension would gradually, but perceptibly increase throughout.

Le Carre’s great strength, it seems to me (apart from his writing ability), is that he writes with authority. You get a sense that this is a world that he knows about, either from personal experience or thorough research. As a result the plot is entirely credible and its political points hit home all the more forcefully. It is also a very contemporary novel, tackling head on the more disreputable practices of private banking and the scandal of extraordinary rendition as practised by the United States under Bush. This alone makes it a book that deserves to be read.

Why Look at Animals?

Strictly speaking, being a collectionof essays rather than a work of fiction, Why Look at Animals? shouldnot be on this particular list, but John Berger’s writing is so wonderfully measured and lyrical, that I think its inclusion is justified.

Why Look at Animals? is a short collection of eight essays and one poem, most of which ponder on the physicaland metaphysical (indeed philosophical) relationships between humans and beasts. Berger is a journalist, essayist and all-round radical thinker and I first came across his writing about animals in a short article called ‘Why Zoos Disappoint’, published in New Society in 1977 (although I only read it about  five years ago or so). In it he traces the history of the zoo as a nineteenth century institution and a palace of colonial plunder. It was this particular idea of the zoo as an expression of the imperial project that interested me at the time. Also Berger sets out the idea that zoos aim to recreate the natural environment of the animals in an attempt to enable us, as humans, to have a natural and authentic interaction with them. Ultimately, however, this is purely illusory as the zoo itself is inauthentic, an artificial environment, and the animals know t and behave as such. It is a theme that Berger picks up on both in the main essay in this collection and in another essay, ‘The Ape Theatre’, also published here. There are other gems here too – ‘The Eaters and the eaten’ explores the cultural meaning of food and meals and the final piece, an account of the last day in the life of the Austrian philosopher Ernst Fischer, which was spent in Berger’s company, is moving without being sentimental.

Doors Open

Doors Open is Ian Rakin’s first novel since he ‘retired’ Rebus in Exit Music and if Rebus fans were expecting a new detective to begin anther series of novels, then Rankin has surprised them. Firstly, Doors Open is a crime novel, rather than a murder novel and, whilst a new dtective, in the shape of D I Ransome, is introduced to us, he takes somewht of a backseat in proceedings. The central character is instead a dot com millionaire, Mike MacKenzie (an unlikely hero for Rankin, one would have thought), who finds himself forming an unlikely band of crooks with a soon-to-be-retired professor of art and a private banker. Together tey are intent on stealing works of art from the arcives of the Scottish National At Gallery. Once the reader has overcome this raher unbelievable scenario (which lends the novel an element of Ealing comedy) then the rest of the story is realtively understated and entirely credible. Before long the threesome recruit a local gangster to their scheme, introducing some real edge (and violence) to the narrative.

The novel is divided into two halves – the first half in which the heist is plotted and executed, and the second half in which the whole thing starts to unravel, proverbial pigeons come home to roost and the general nastiness begins. With Doors Open Rankin has not fallen into the trap of trying to replace Rebus, but instead gives us more of a yarn, told with his usual wit, pace and flair. There is one oblique reference to Rebus in the book – just to remind us that this world is the same world. In time we might begin to recategorise the Rebus books as being part of a larger collection of work from Rankin – his Edingurgh novels.

The Girl Who Played with Fire

This is the second volume in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (the final volume was published earlier this week in the UK) and I found it an even more satisfying read than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). The same series of characters play their part and Larsson’s anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander, is his most masterly creation. The Girl Who Played with Fire is as complex as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and perhaps more so – it certainly has a greater sense of urgency. But the book is much more than a crime thriller. It is a damning indictment of sex trafficking and the criminality of the powerful, the hypocrisy of the establishment and the complacency of society at large that allows the vulnerable to be exploited and abused. And if this weren’t enough, Larsson never misses an opportunity to make well-aimed political attacks on oppression and injustive wherever he sees it – and he does it without grandstanding or even the hint of a moralising tone. The hard-work and dedication that has gone into the writing of these books is almost tangible.