The Narrow Road to the Far North by Richard Flanagan

The 2014 winner of the Man Booker Prize proved to live up to the extremely high levels of literary fiction I have come to expect.  In fact, this novel has helped me formalize my ideas about literary fiction.  To some, literary fiction implies snobbery in reading.  I could not disagree more.  To me, literary fiction is a novel which carries the reader along on a cool breeze of prose.  I care not a wit for how it will end, or “whodunit.”  Rather, I immerse myself in delicious prose that nearly convinces me I am in the story, observing, listening, and learning.

Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Far North does all this and more.  I have read numerous books which detailed – in whole or in part – the horrors of the Holocaust.  I knew about other atrocities committed by all sides during World War II – the fire-bombing of Dresden comes to mind not to forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and I knew from the film Bridge on the River Kwai some of the sordid details of the abuse of prisoners of war in a futile attempt to build a railway through Southeast Asia,

But Flanagan has taken me to the jungle, the prison camps.  He has shown me the starvation, the agonizing and painful deaths from cholera, beri-beri, dengue fever, malaria, surgery without anesthesia, on top of beatings, torture, and public beheadings.  Now you might think, “How can such a horrific book be enjoyable?”  Good question!  Flanagan manages to spend large portions on the novel focusing on lives of some men before the war and after – including the Japanese camp guards and officers.  He humanizes, without excusing.  He explains without judging.

Dorrigo Evans is a doctor and a colonel in the Australian army.  Along with about a thousand men, he has been captured by the Japanese and sent to build a railroad through nearly impenetrable jungle.  A rather complex character, Evans has attained a position of respect and is a celebrity and a hero for his actions in the war.  Flanagan writes, “It was hot in the room, but it felt to him far less stifling than the poetry reading below.  He pulled out a book here and there, but what kept catching his attention were the diagonal tunnels of sunlight rolling in through the dormer windows.  All around him dust motes rose and fell, shimmering, quivering in those shafts of roiling light.  He found several shelves full of old editions of classical writers and began vaguely browsing, hoping to find a cheap edition of Virgil’s Aeniad, which he had only ever read in a borrowed copy.  It wasn’t really the great poem of antiquity that Dorrigo Evans wanted though, but the aura he felt around such books --  an aura that both radiated outwards and took him inwards to another world that said to him he was not alone.  //  And in this sense, this feeling of communion, would at moments overwhelm him.  At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe, and all books were simply portals into this greater work – an inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly was, a book without beginning or end” (48).

I share this sentiment with Dorrigo, and when he sleeps, he has “beside his bed, as he always did, no matter where he was, a book, […].  A good book he had concluded, leaves you wanting to reread the book.  A great book compels you to reread your own soul” (22).  Richard Flanagan’s novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North is a great book.  Read it and revisit your own soul.  5 stars 

-- Chiron, 12/9/14

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

My Sunday mornings are filled with the dawn sky, a cup of tea, the sounds of birds at the feeders, and The New York Times Book Review.  The first feature in the review I look for is “By the Book” – usually an interview with an author who has a new book or won a prize.  Recently, the column featured Alice Hoffman.  The most interesting question in this series is the interviewees “favorite overlooked or under-appreciated writer.”  Hoffman mentioned Penelope Lively, so I decided to read Moon Tiger, Lively’s 1987 Man Booker Prize-winning novel. 

According to her website, Penelope was born in Cairo, Egypt.  She came to England at the age of twelve and went to boarding school in Sussex.  She subsequently read Modern History at St. Anne's College, Oxford.  Lively now has six grandchildren and lives in London.  She has written 20 novels along with several works of non-fiction and a whole shelf of children’s books.

Moon Tiger is the story of Claudia Hampton, who lies in a bed and passes in and out of consciousness.  She has written historical works and decides she will write a history of the world.  The novel alternates between lucid moments, plans for the history, and remembering her visits to those places.  When doctors, nurses, her daughter, Lisa, or her sister-in-law, Sylvia, stop by for visits, she chats a bit but then falls asleep.  She delineates the chapters of her book, but she always slides toward recalling visits to those places while a correspondent during World War II.  Interestingly enough, these “out-of-consciousness” moments shift between first and third person accounts.  The “History of the World” slowly devolves into a “History of Claudia.”

I found these changes in point of view a bit disconcerting at first, but once I became accustomed to them, the novel carried me along to Egypt.  From that point on, I could hardly put it down. 

Claudia has some disdain for Sylvia.  Lively writes, “She has given little trouble.  She has devoted herself to children and houses.  A nice, old-fashioned girl, Mother called her, at their third meeting, seeing quite correctly through the superficial disguise of pink fingernails, swirling New Look skirts and a cloud of Mitsouko cologne spray.  There was a proper wedding, which Mother loved, with arum lilies, little bridesmaids and a marquee on the lawn of Sylvia’s parents’ home at Farnham.  I declined to be matron of honour and Gordon got rather drunk at the reception.  They spent their honeymoon in Spain and Sylvia settled down to live, as she thought, happily ever after in North Oxford” (23).  I detected a note of jealousy, because Claudia and Gordon were rather close.

Penelope Lively

 So, I have another check mark on my journey through the Man Booker Prize Novels, and I continue to believe this prize represents the best literary fiction.  Alice Hoffman was correct.  Penelope Lively is most definitely underappreciated, and Moon Tiger is a great example of her work.  I have one more of her novels, and then … but you know what I am going to say.  5 stars

--Chiron, 3/7/14

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I haven’t read any Julian Barnes since Flaubert’s Parrot and History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters in grad school. When the 2011 Booker Prize went to Barnes for A Sense of an Ending, I pounced on it. My complete set of Booker Prize winning novels is one of my prize collections.

Ending is divided into two parts. The first tells the story of four friends in high school: Colin, Alex, the narrator Tony Webster, and a newcomer to the school, Adrian Finn. The boys graduate and slowly drift apart. Then Adrian dies unexpectedly, and the memories come crashing down on Tony. Part of his past also reappears in the form of Veronica – a woman Tony cared about deeply, but who dropped him rather abruptly and unkindly. That’s it – no more plot.

The story is a lot more complicated, as Barnes delves into the sometimes distorted memory of Tony, who as Veronica says, “doesn’t get it.” Tony hasn’t really given much thought about the details of his life in years. The novel opens with a list of images, which re-appear throughout the novel. These images, first out of, and then, in context provide an interesting backdrop to the story.

Barnes has written a novel which begs to be read in a single sitting. His prose mesmerizes the reader and creates a hunger for more of the details of Tony and his friends.

Appropriately enough, the opening scene is a history class, and the boys offer differing interpretations of the past. Professor Hunt asked Tony, “What is history?” Tony replied, “History is the lies of the victors” … and then Hunt says, “as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated” (18).

Later, Tony muses, “It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others” (88). I wondered, who is the victor? Who the defeated?

The themes of history and memory run through the novel, and Barnes has his narrator constantly turning over the stones of his past to understand himself and the context of his life. Barnes writes, “Someone once said that his favourite times in history were when things were collapsing, because that meant something new was being born. Does this make sense if we apply it to our individual lives? To die when something new was being born – even if that something new is our very own self?

A most interesting question! Ultimately, Tony determines the significance of his memories, but a surprise ending brings the entire story into focus. 5 stars

--Chiron, 11/11/11

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is one of those unusual writers nearly everyone loves. His prose is smooth and calm, with interesting characters mixed into a deceptively simple plot. I am tempted to throw away all my scruples about revealing too much of the story, since McEwan fooled me so thoroughly, but I won’t.

His prose pulls the reader along, like a lazy day on the river. And even though we might hear a dull roar ahead, we are two closely bound into his story to pay any attention. Then, when it’s too late, the end comes and we are flying over the waterfall in shock – and delight!

Clive and Vernon have been friends for a long time. They both had a relationship – at different times – with Molly. Clive is a composer who has been commissioned to compose a symphony for the celebration of the millennium. Vernon is the editor of a newspaper teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and closure. The both have a tense relationship with the wealthy George, widower of Molly. The story opens at Molly’s funeral. That is all you get.

This typical scene has Clive working on his symphony as the deadline approaches. Constant interruptions prevent him from piecing together fragments of the ending:

"At nine-thirty he stood and decided to pull himself together, drink some red wine and get on with the work. There was his beautiful theme, his song, spread out on the page, craving his attention, needing one inspired modification, and here he was, alive with focused energy, ready to make it. But downstairs he lingered in the kitchen over his rediscovered supper, listening to a history of the nomadic Morroccan Tuareg people on the radio, and then he took his third glass of Bandol for a wander about the house, an anthropologist to his own existence." (150)

I put down the novel after reading this passage, and wandered through my house looking at paintings, carvings, drawings, photos, and books that spelled out the interests of my life. I tried to imagine what someone who did not know me might think. Then, I understood what Clive was doing.

If you have never read McEwan, many of his novels are good places to start – Atonement, or A Child in Time, or Saturday, or Black Dogs, or, of course, Amsterdam, which won the Booker Prize in 1998. I am working my way through his 12 novels – this is my fifth, and it is about time I went on a spending spree and completed my collection. Five Stars

--Chiron, 2/18/10

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

This curious favorite of book clubs has only a tinge of the bizarre. Except for three chapters in which Pi discusses his embrace of all three major religions, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. The prose has a sing-song quality, and I found myself hearing the narrator with a stereotypical Indian accent.

Piscine Molitor Patel (Pi) lives with his family in India. Pi’s father is a zookeeper, and the boy has learned a lot about zoo animals and their care. Facing financial ruin, the zoo animals are sold to North American zoos so the family can emigrate to Canada. The Patels load the creatures onto a rusty freighter piloted by Japanese officers with a Chinese crew. During a storm, the ship sinks, and Pi finds himself alone on a lifeboat with a spotted hyena, an orangutan, a rat, a zebra with a broken leg, and a tiger. For over 200 days, the 16-year-old boy battles the elements and his fellow survivors of the wreck.

The only connection I can make between the religious odyssey, which causes Pi to attend a Hindu Temple, a mosque, and mass at the local Catholic Church, and the story involves a sort of reworking of the Lord of the Flies scenario. None of these religions insulate Pi from abandoning all his values and beliefs. Aside from an occasional epithet, “Jesus, Mary, Mohammed, and Vishnu” the religious part of the story does not directly figure into the rest of the novel.

Pi never addresses the contradictions these three religions present, but rather focuses only on their surface similarities. He worries about violating an injunction of one but does not seem to justify his actions when another religion permits the same behavior.

The ending is quite a surprise, and will leave the reader guessing. All in all, a more than worthwhile read. The story of Pi’s 220 plus days in the boat is exciting – I could barely put the book down then. Maybe another read will reveal more details and a better explanation. 4-1/2 stars

--Chiron, 5/10/09

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle won the Mann Booker Prize for Paddy in 1993, and this wonderful novel is my latest attempt to read all forty Booker Prize winners. I already have completed 15, so the list is down to 25 right now.

Paddy Clarke, at ten years of age, sees the world through innocent eyes. The summer of this novel involves sleeping late, playing a variety of games with his friends, including his best friend, Kevin and two brothers named Aidan and Liam, and interacting with his parents, a younger brother Sinbad, and his infant sister, Catherine.

The snatches of adult conversation Paddy picks up come across as funny bits of gossip the young boy does not understand. However, Doyle accurately captured the wonder and innocence of a ten year old along with the humor that comes from the mouths of children. Try this quote: “We didn’t need bikes then. We walked; we ran. We ran away. That was the best running away. We shouted at watchmen, we threw stones at windows, we played knick-knack and ran away. We owned Barrytown, the whole lot of it. It went on forever. It was a country. Bayside was for bikes” (150). What ten-year old hasn’t had these thoughts! I know I have, dim as those memories are now.

The only problem I had with the book involves some slang terms. I could deduce a few from the context, a few I knew from my reading of James Joyce, but many bewildered me. I wonder if there is a dictionary of Irish slang to go along with my Webster’s Dictionary of American Slang. My favorite mystery word, “pruned,” seems to resemble some sort of “wedgie.” Quite a few Gaelic words have footnotes for translation.

Also, a couple of jokes evaded me. For example,

“---Where was Moses when the lights went out?
I answered.
---Under the bed looking for matches.
---Good man, he said.
I didn’t understand it but it made me laugh” (145).

Doyle uses Joyce’s convention of dashes to indicate dialogue. Makes me want to go back for another reading of Portrait!

Nevertheless, a delightful, pleasant, thoroughly enjoyable way to while away some hours with a cup of tea, a lap full of cat, and a handful of doggie ear. 4-1/2 stars

--Chiron, 2/20/09

The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens

Bernice Rubens was awarded the second Mann Booker prize in 1970 for The Elected Member. Assembling a complete collection of every award-winner since 1969 was fun. A few titles were tough and had to be ordered from England, but as this novel shows, it was well-worth the effort.

Rubens tells the story of a Jewish couple who immigrated to England from Lithuania. They had three children, a son, Norman, and two daughters, Esther and Bella. Norman was a brilliant child, learning a dozen languages by the time he was ten. He was headed for a brilliant law career until circumstances caused his fall into insanity. With his wife, Sarah, dead from cancer, Rabbi Zweck was forced to cope with his son’s mental illness alone with Bella. Esther had left the family home after a dispute about her marriage plans. All these characters have secrets, and in a series of skillfully unfolded flashbacks, we begin to piece together the struggles this family has endured.

The intensely detailed characters make this novel more than deserving of the then newly-founded prize. The descriptions of Norman’s illness are frightening, sad, and gripping. Only the week of finals grading delayed my finishing this novel until today.

Rubens is a writer I will seek out for other titles. She was able to infuse episodes of real humor among those of tragedy and sorrow. One example is when Mrs. Goldberg comes into Rabbi Zweck’s shop after witnessing Norman’s removal to a mental institution. Abie, as Sarah called her husband, does not want to talk to Mrs. Goldberg out of embarrassment, but as she silently enters the shop, makes a purchase, and opens the door to leave, Abie suddenly wants to talk to her. She immediately turns around, sits down, and spends the rest of the afternoon consoling her friend.

Rubens used quite a few Yiddish words. Some could be figured out from the context, but a few could not. I wonder if a Yiddish dictionary is available.

An interesting aspect of the novel was figuring out who the “elected member” was and for what purpose. As the lives of the family members are laid bare, the answer to this puzzle becomes evident.

The Elected Member was one of the more difficult Booker Prize titles to locate, but if you can track down a copy, you will not be disappointed. Five stars

--Chiron, 12/14/08

Holiday by Stanley Middleton

One shelf of my library now holds a nearly complete collection of Booker Prize-winning novels which date back to 1969. The short list for the 40th award for 2008 has just been announced, and Salman Rushdie’s The Enchantress of Florence is there. I have never been disappointed in the Man Booker Prize, awarded annually for English-language novels from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. This 1974 prize winner bears a striking resemblance to the 2005 winner, The Sea by John Banville, so I catapulted it to the top of my TBR list.

This was a tough read. The style is difficult, largely due to strange word order and comments dropped at the end of a line of dialogue. It took a while to become accustomed to this strange wording, but the story was absorbing; however, it was nothing at all like Banville’s “elegant and lyrical language so rich it takes the breath away” as I wrote in my review of The Sea. After about 100 pages, comfort set in, and it was no longer a problem. There were occasional flashes of brilliance, for example: “The sun-bars angled down packed wild with dust-specks so that the air danced alive with energy between the areas of dim cleanliness” (2).

Perhaps Middleton has matched his language to the confused state of mind of the main character, Edwin Fisher, who has escaped from his wife, whom he now detests. Before leaving, Edwin seemed genuinely to have tried to smooth things over and save his marriage – at least from his version of the story told in a series of brief flashbacks. Like the character in The Sea, Edwin travels to a seashore vacation resort of his youth to grapple with a life-changing event, but Edwin also has to contend with the memory of a stormy relationship with his father.

The ridiculously formal meeting of Meg and Edwin at the end seemed too contrived to be realistic. I did not get the impression that this meeting was “in character” for either of them. Placing this novel in time was difficult, assigning an age to the characters even more so. This might all be attributed to a setting in the middle to late 50s. An annoyingly intrusive father-in-law seems to sympathize with Edwin, but his condescension should have caused Edwin to send him packing.

The novel was also peppered with words and phrases I have never heard. My library contains a lot of British fiction – old and new – and this is not usually a problem for me. One intriguing word (biro, biroing) appeared quite a few times. After three, I surmised it was some sort of writing instrument, but I could not be sure. It was not in my large Random House Dictionary, nor was it in the O.E.D. 3-1/2 stars because I had to work so hard without much reward.

--Chiron, 8/9/08

The Sea by John Banville

For many years, I have been buying Man Booker Prize-winning novels. This recently added title to the collection was my first by Banville, and I knew almost nothing about him. I have to say I was bowled over by this book.

The Sea is a psychological excursion through memory, first love, loss, aging, and trying not to forget. Banville has written a masterful novel, with elegant and lyrical language so rich it takes the breath away. Reading this novel will introduce at least a dozen new vocabulary words. Keep a dictionary handy!

The narrator, Max, has lost his wife, and he returns to the scene of his childhood summers to recapture his youth, perhaps even to try and start his life over again. The prose ebbs and flows like the sea – the ocean is everywhere and in every sentence. The salt air wafts off the page; the sun and sand are all around the reader -- the writing is that vivid.

The psychological insights are, at times profound, and at other times mistaken, but they are all human. Some surprises at the end also make the reader sprint to the end of the story as if trying to escape the pounding surf.

I have already bought four more titles by Banville, and I hope they are even close to this novel. Five stars, without any reservation at all.

--Chiron, 7/4/08