This is my review of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.

The gruesome opening chapter ends on a positive note, which indicates the tone of the novel as a whole. After only a few pages, I felt in the hands of a skilled storyteller. The plot is unusual for western readers: the intrigue and plotting between often corrupt members of the Dutch East India Company, and the world of Imperial Japan at the dawn of the C19 – a land so enclosed that the traders have to operate from an artificial island in the harbour of Nagasaki – a touch of bitter irony here when you consider the fate of that city as the recipient of an American atomic bomb.

I enjoyed the deft plotting, varied cast of characters and originality of the first section. When the plot moves on to focus on the claustrophobic world of an enclosed Japanese shrine, it becomes more of a traditional escape thriller, and a bit "over the top" at times. However, the frequent twists are often the reverse of what one would expect, and eventually the threads all tie together to give a satisfying ending, with deeper food for thought about the different values of the two main cultures involved – European versus Japanese – the importance of "honour" or integrity and nature of personal happiness.

Mitchell seems to have an impressive knowledge of Japanese history and language. I like his style, in particular the interweaving of dialogue, the inner thoughts of the speakers, and descriptions. There are some poetic passages, as good as Dylan Thomas's "Under Milkwood", but it never becomes heavy or pretentious.

At various points I was also reminded of Wilkie Collins, Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn), Somerset Maugham's tales of the far east, Umberto Eco (Name of the Rose) or Patrick White's sea stories (but this is more digestible than the last-named).

Apart from being well-written, I found this an exciting page turner which I wanted to finish – better to my mind (although less original) than "Cloud Atlas" because of the sustained and complex plotting, the humour, and the fact that one comes to care about the characters – tension is increased by the fact Mitchell is clearly prepared to kill them off ruthlessly it it serves the plot.

My only tiny criticisms are that I am not sure the twee sketches add much and some sentences in foreign languages e.g. Latin tags are not translated, which is frustrating.

Overall, I now understand the hype surrounding David Mitchell, and this would have made a deserving winner of the Booker…..

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The People’s Train by Thomas Keneally.

Years ago I gave up reading Schindler's Ark since the dry detail and plodding plot made it too tedious – it took Spielberg's vision to make it into the poignant and dramatic film which did justice to the true story.

A few chapters into "The People's Train", which I had to read for a book group, my old reservations about Keneally's writing began to surface. This book reads like an exercise into how not to write a novel. It is not that the plot lacks inherent interest: a charismatic working class political activist in the dying days of the tsarist regime takes refuge in Brisbane where he tries to galvanise the tramworkers and sheep shearers into strike action and discovers that democracies can be as oppressive as dictatorships. Then he returns to Russia to take part in the 1917 Revolution. The book appears to be based on thorough research, and it contains a few striking dramatic situations (which I cannot spoil by revealing). It raises some interesting moral issues about direct action, such as why people may be more shocked about a communist revolutionary marrying a rich woman to use her money for the cause than by an idealistic young woman blowing up an aristocrat with a bomb.

No, what troubled me was the "tin ear" quality of much of the writing and the rambling structure. The book was like a first draft which needs to be reshaped and honed. The style is firmly placed at the "telling not showing" end of the spectrum. Thus, dialogues are often unnatural, used to give the reader information rather than reveal the personalities and interrelationships of the characters. The latter are two-dimensional and underdeveloped. The two different voices used for the first person narration, initially the Russian Artem and then the Aussie Paddy Dykes in the second part, sound too much the same. Paddy's record in particular suffers from the problem of covering events at which he was not present and could not have understood much of anyway because conducted in Russian!

The small number of dramatic scenes tend to be handled so clumsily that most of the potential tension, suspense and emotional power is stripped from them. The reader is subjected to a myriad of unimportant details. I suppose that the tedium of political activism – endless meetings and reports – could be realistic but does not make for a gripping read. Yet I would save my greatest criticism for the lamentable sex scenes, for which strong men lapse into cringe-making bathos. To quote:

XX " and I took to the single bed the place offered and partly sated and partly enlarged our hunger for each other. The bed was enlarged too, so that it seemed a valid arena for us. She proved all that could be imagined: a superb, white, richly curved creation, generous enough to let me see that much. Still, there was a discretion and modesty in the way she went about it – is it crass to say that in large part her outer garments remained undisturbed?"

Not surprisingly, this relationship does not last!

The conclusion of the book, I think meant to be a moment of climax with hints of future disappointments, is in fact too weak.

With editing, I could respect this approach to writing as biography or popular history, but as fiction it fails.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

This is my review of A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore.

Some major critics describe this book as "life-changing". That seems to be excessive praise. Amateur reviewers tend to observe that this novel is less successful than the wry, poetical short stories which are Moore's forte.

With this my only experience of her writing, I found the plot potentially sufficient for a novel and ripe with possiblities. A couple "purchase" the adoption of a mixed race child: their utter unsuitability for this, and the rotten state of their marriage, gradually become apparent. This is observed by Tassie, their exploited childminder, a naive and inexperienced yet perceptive college student, who is brought out of her dreamy state of delayed adolesence by a chain of harsh doses of reality which form the climax of the novel.

Examples of the positive aspects of the book include vivid descriptions of the weather and wildlife, the witty comedy of the egocentric non-communication of the Wednesday night mixed raced adoption parents' support group (don't recall the precise title) and some agonising desciptions of the pain of bereavement. For the funeral scene near the end, I would give five stars.

However, flashes of brilliance are too often obscured by some very self-indulgent writing. The author cannot resist going off at a tangent, piling digression on digression, in overlong and often confusing sentences. Having made a point, she just goes on and on, sometimes losing the reader completely – especially if not au fait with the American cultural allusions. She does not know when to stop! Some scenes appear unnecessary e.g. a whole chapter given to Tassie eating a meal in her employer's empty restaurant, taking up space which could have been used to develop the plot itself more. Then there is the obsession with word play and puns. This may work well in a Carol Ann Duffy-style poem, but is often inappropriate here, especially when not very funny in the first place.

This "experimental" writing inevitably means that some bits will work with one reader and not another. However, it runs the risk that too much does not work with most people. This matters because the rambling approach destroys the potential drama of some scenes, and makes most characters seem unengaging. I found the majority of them very unconvincing, particularly the adoptive mother Sarah Brink who played a major part. Small point: the adopted toddler appeared to grow up too fast in a period of a few months, and often seemed too advanced for the two year old she was meant to be.

Although I appreciate why many people admire Moore's unusual and striking use of language, I shall think carefully before embarking on another of her novels.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

“You have to get right into the action, readers are impatient.” Perhaps Barbara Kingsolver should have heeded the advice of her “hero”, the author Harrison Shepherd. The first couple of hundred pages were heavy going, being mainly in the form of the diary written largely in Mexico by the teenage Harrison, rambling entries in an often pretentious style with stilted conversations and unengaging characters, not least the waspish woman who turned out to be the painter Frida Kahlo- it was hard to believe she was only about five years older than Harrison. I realised later that the style had a point as he was meant to be developing his voice as a writer. Also, the relevance of the initially tedious interruptions of the “Archivist’s Notes” made sense in due course. The odd witty comment or well-observed scene made the effort of reading worthwhile, such as the vivid account (back in America) of bystanders caught up in an over-zealous attack , as government troops used tear gas and brute force to quell demonstrating soldiers with a legitimate grievance over pay. However, too much hung on the reputation of “The Poisonwood Bible” to keep me reading.

The plot picked up pace when Trotsky appeared on the scene, but the book really began to absorb me on Harrison’s return to the States, as a guilt-ridden young man who hadn’t managed to save Trotsky from the icepick, inspired to write novels by Frida. Kingsolver’s descriptions of small-town life in the Mid-West rang truer for me than those of the painter Rivera’s household in Mexico. However, perhaps the writing had found its rhythm because the subsequent return visits to Mexico with Harrison’s assistant Violet Brown (and her splendid dry wit – “Even a feather duster will lay an egg in April”) also seemed more alive.

I was very impressed by the build up of tension as Harrison inadvertently but inexorably attracted the malign attention of the Committee of Un-American Activities, culminating in a excellent trial scene, written like a play – out-crucibling “The Crucible”. The final section tied up the ends neatly, and returned full circle to show the relevance of some of the earlier passages, such as Harrison’s discovery of his first “lacuna”- the hole in the cliff exposed only at low tide. I liked the final note of optimism to relieve the initial apparent darkness of the ending. The author succeeded in making us grow to care about Harrison.

Unlike, “Poisonwood”, which tails off and loses focus after a brilliant first part, this book has an excellent second half, but a beginning which could have done with more hints of the promise to come. A shorter first part with a sharper focus would have made a more effective novel overall. I could have done with a glossary of Mexican terms, a brief history and biography of the historical characters, for quick reference.

It was an interesting approach to make “an ordinary man” the vehicle for an exploration of the abuse of power, and the similarities in this respect between apparently very different regimes, be they ancient Mexico, the Soviet Union under Stalin, or the States when prey to McCarthyism. In the process, the “celebrities”, Frida and her husband, were perhaps unduly blurred, although Trotsky was portrayed as a more rounded and sympathetic character. I am not sure that Kingsolver has revealed any great truths or insights, but she has the power to remind and outrage us once again over the way men can misuse ideologies to persecute each other.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of The Slap (Atlantic Cult Classics) by Christos Tsiolkas.

The slap is an incident at a barbecue, where a man commits the cardinal social sin of hitting an obnoxious child who is not his own. This is clearly a rich vein to mine for a modern moral maze. The author is ambitious in his approach, by selecting eight very diverse people affected by the slap to varying degrees, not merely to develop the ramificatons of this event, but as a cue to explore their attitudes and values in general, in order to place under the microscope urban life in C21 Australia. This broad scope leads to a lengthy novel, full of digressions which diffuse the potential drama of the slap and its immediate outcomes.

I have no idea how realistic the portrayal of Melbourne is and the extent to which the author meant to portray so many of the characters as crude, selfish and insensitive, corrupted by the society around them, but the amoral, drug and booze-fuelled lifestyle which is apparently the norm is depressing. Some of the characters are clearly intended to be flawed e.g. Rosie and Gary, and the reasons for this are spelt out without much subtlety. The frequency of gratuitously foul language, pill-popping, messy bonking and casual infidelity alongside excessively violent and shifting emotions, makes many of the characters seem too similar, and reduces what could have been a powerful and thought-provoking drama to a farce, in which one cares too little about the fate of those concerned. The graphic descriptions of bodily functions are probably very honest, but add nothing to the tale. I agree with those who found the book overlong, with too many characters introduced at the barbecue in the first section. It was only necessary to include those who would reappear or are crucial to the story. The chapters after the resolution of the court case on "the slap" seem an anti-climax. I may have missed something, but the end of the last chapter struck me as very weak, with too overt a desire to "dot the 'i's' and cross the ts'". I may be wrong, but feel that the author has an interest in exploring issues of bisexuality (Connie's father) and "coming out" as gay (Richie), which create a complexity too far to muddy the central theme of the book.

To be fair, some scenes are very well-observed, so I am left with the feeling that this book began with great potential but became flabby with the overlong string of descriptions of individual excess and offers only a rather muddled message which needed more careful expression.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.

Set in small-town Kansas in the 1950s, this is a beautifully written mixture of reminiscences and musings on the meaning of life and faith by a pious old preacher, John Ames, intended to be read after his death by the son born very late in his life. You may be put off by some of the preachy passages and theological philosophizing, but this aspect is very much what you would expect of a man who has devoted his life to this way of thinking. Also, the dominance of religion and the plethora of sects is true to life in rural America. What could have become cloying hokum is made endurable for me by the frequent anecdotes of life in the often harsh world of rural Kansas, and the insights into relationships fractured by the Civil War, and differences of opinion over slavery and religion – pacificm versus muscular war-making, or even over the truth of religion itself. Ames' discovery of love as an old man, and his delight in his young son, are also portrayed well.

A key point is that "Gilead" (the name of the town where the story is set) is in fact "half a story" which benefits from being read in conjunction with "Home" which covers the same events from different perspectives. At the heart of both books lies Jack Boughton, son of Ames' old friend since childhood. Jack is a charismatic misfit, perhaps driven to become a the tortured drifter and drinker by his inability to accept his family's beliefs and life style. Returning to Gilead, like the Prodigal Son, he is the subject of both joy and sorrow for the two old men, both challenging and enriching their belief. The two books are so tightly bound together that some key scenes e.g. a lengthy discussion between Jack and the two old men as to whether people can be predestined to be bad, are reproducd verbatim in both books. On the other hand, key details, say of Jack's life, which are leaked out gradually in both books, are not duplicated, so that you have to read both to get the whole picture. I thought for a while that it would have been better to weld the two stories, "Gilead" and "Home", into one. However, that could have made the book quite long. I concluded that the two separate books "work" as an idea, and particularly like the interplay between the characters, and their different perceptions of the same events. If forced to choose, "Home" is easier to read, less theological, with more interaction between characters and dialogue, but perhaps less "profound" in its thinking.

At times I was bored by the rambling, repetitive passages which seem to me to indicate a lack of effort over devising a stucture, although they also of course convey the way people actually think. Similarly, some sentences are too long i.e. need to be read twice for the sense. In such a skilful wordsmith as Robinson this must be an intentional "stream of consciousness." It is a mark of this book that often some passing thought is represented as more significant than a major aspect of the plot. There is however some progression in the book, as the reason for Ames' hostility to Jack is revealed, and his feelings for the younger man gradually evolve to become more positive.

Gilead provides insights into both the joys and the utter sadness of life. Although I remain of the view that "Gilead" suffers from a lack of structure and that some relationships e.g between Jack and his wife. are too thin, this is a memorable book which will repay rereading.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars