Books

“The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science”: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner by Andrea Wulf – Could any book do greater justice to its subject than this?

This is my review of The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner by Andrea Wulf.

It is hard to think of a more impressive book than this – gripping, entertaining and informative as the author marshalls with great skill a mass of facts and ideas.

Although largely forgotten now, with his unflagging energy and curiosity, Humboldt achieved widespread fame during his long life (1769-1859) as a traveller, explorer and writer. Fortunate to have been born before it was necessary to be a specialist, Humboldt was influenced by Goethe to view the world as a unified whole, consisting of multiple interactions. Although, as a scientist, he continued to believe in the importance of close observation and precise measurement in understanding the world, he also grasped the need for imagination. “Nature must be experienced through feeling” and those who limit themselves to the simple classification of plants, animals and rocks “will never get close to it”.

Humboldt was a visionary thinker, ahead of his time. He suggested that creatures had evolved years before Darwin, in turn inspired by Humboldt’s writing, began to think about natural selection. He conceived the idea of an ecosystem, or groups of organisms coexisting in the same environment, decades before another disciple, Haeckel, coined the term “ecology”. Always looking for patterns, Humboldt was quick to notice how plants seemed to differ according to climate, in turn linked to latitude. In the same way, mountains, like the dramatic snow-topped Chimborazo which he climbed in Ecuador, demonstrated predictable zones of vegetation according to altitude, ranging from the tropical palms of the lowland, through the oaks and ferns of temperate climates up to the barren surfaces above the treeline. Through observation, he developed ideas of human-induced climatic change, as in the case of excessive clearing of forests in both Europe and South America. He even invented isotherms.

He realised that the nocturnal outbreaks of cacophony in the South American forests were not, as the natives claimed, the animals’ way of worshipping the moon, but “a long-extended and ever-amplifying battle” as the jaguars chased the tapirs, whose flight scared the monkeys, who disturbed the birds” and so on.

Unable to travel outside Europe before gaining his inheritance at the age of about thirty, Humboldt found the added difficulty of obtaining passage on a suitable vessel when most ships were needed for the Napoleonic wars. Then there was the further risk of being attacked by British warships when he eventually sailed to the South American colonies on a Spanish frigate.

His jouneys were full of bizarre incidents: the natives of the South American Llanos drove a herd of wild horses into a pond to drive up to the surface the electric eels that he was keen to study. Not only did some of the horses perish, but Humboldt and his colleagues made themselves ill from the shocks which could still be generated by the weakened eels. Years later on a trip to Russia, in defiance of the authoritarian government which sought to control his movements, Humboldt took his party on a 2000-mile detour at lightning speed to see the Altai Mountains where Russia, China and Mongolia meet. When their route was blocked by a major outbreak of anthrax, the ruthless Humboldt simply stocked up with uncontaminated food, and dashed through the affected area with all the carriage windows closed.

In the quarter-century gap between a five year odyssey in South America, often totally cut off from events in Europe and his visit to Russia, it is initially surprising to realise that he spent much of the time in Paris, which he loved for its cultural opportunities, or serving through gritted teeth at the court of the King of Prussia, where he disparaged Berlin as “little, illiterate and over-spiteful”. Yet he was far from idle, being prolific in writing detailed, often richly illustrated books about his journeys and ideas on nature in relation to man, lecturing and corresponding with other scientists and thinkers. Having impoverished himself through his travels, publications and supporting young scientists, he was forced to endure a tedious court post humouring the king, when his preference was for democracy, along with his condemnation of slavery.

He longed to travel to India, but was blocked by the all-powerful East India Company’s refusal to grant permission for this, despite his fame.

This is not merely the biography of a hyper-active, charismatic, workaholic genius, liberal-minded, often generous, yet sharp-tongued and dominating conversations in his unconscious assumption of superior knowledge, even talking over a piano specially played for his benefit, only to astound students by quietly taking notes alongside them when he knew there was something new to learn in chemistry or geology.

The final chapters also cover some of the gifted environmentalists who were inspired by him, such as George Perkins Marsh who in “Man and Nature” assembled comprehensive evidence of the destruction of the earth by human activity. “The Old World had to be the New World’s cautionary tale”. But, with the 1862 Homesteads Act which gave every loyal American over 21 the right to 160 acres, how could the march of change be prevented? Another example is John Muir, who set up the Sierra Club, now the largest grassroots environmental organisation in the US, and who was responsible for the establishment of the Yosemite National Park.

This is a fascinating book to encourage others to read, and return to again.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars


The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science: Costa & Royal Society Prize Winner
 

“Commonwealth” by Ann Patchett -Family fate

This is my review of Commonwealth by Ann Patchett.

When LA cop Fig admits uninvited guest Bert Cousins to his daughter Franny’s christening party, little does he realise that this will trigger the break-up of his marriage to the beautiful blonde Beverley. One cannot know to what extent this is autobiographical, but Ann Patchett’s personal experience of parental divorce and remarriage leading to the sudden acquisition of step-siblings and enforced living with strangers must provide plenty of material to develop this aspect of domestic drama. A further twist is Franny’s eventual marriage to a famous writer who sees the potential of her family story to create a bestselling novel, leading to further reactions of hostility, resentment or guilt over the exploitation of family members.

I was hooked by the kaleidoscopic impressions of the first chapter, as the party begins to spin out of control under the influence of Bert’s inappropriate gift of a large bottle of gin, inevitably prompting the opening of others. I could appreciate the author’s much-praised gift for using small often banal incidents to reveal much about situations and characters, seen from different points of view.

The nine chapters, some quite lengthy, may seem like linked short stories, relying heavily on flashbacks to reveal the chain of events, including a tragedy with the power to destroy the family. I regret that in the second chapter, I felt an abrupt loss of engagement. This is partly due to the grim setting of a cancer ward where Fig is to be found receiving chemotherapy, accompanied by an adult Franny. I was continuously distracted trying to work out how many decades have passed since the christening in 1964. The flitting sequence of reminiscences and thoughts felt quite contrived, a device for filling the reader in, but it is hard to keep track of all the characters mentioned – which of these have we already heard about or met in Chapter 1? It is disconcerting, for instance, to find that Albie, not yet born in Chapter 1, has become a delinquent arsonist, while Bert and Beverley have divorced before one knew for sure they had ever married. It is hard to relate to comments and anecdotes about characters before they have been clearly established in a story.

What seems like a promising theme therefore comes across as a bit of a mess in its execution. I wanted to like the novel, but too often found it boring and “spread too thinly” across an excessive number of largely underdeveloped characters. To be fair, perhaps the fact I had just read the exceptional “The Invention of Nature” made me set the bar too high, meaning I was not in the mood to make the effort to connect with this novel. I certainly admire the author’s desire to broach diverse, complex topics from different angles, having read “Bel Canto” , inspired by the hostage-taking of the President of Peru, where she explores the views of both terrorists and captives, revolving round the charismatic persona of the opera singer who is one of the prisoners. Very different again was “State of Wonder” in which a pharmaceutical researcher braves the remote Amazonian rainforest to discover what happened to her lover who had gone to work there.

In short, this is a book which divides opinion and promotes discussion.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


Commonwealth
 

“Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics” by Tim Marshall -Prisoners of hype and soundbite

 

This is my review of Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall.

The “bestseller” status of this book suggests a widespread desire to make sense of a troubled world without having to invest too much time in this. A paperback compact enough to read easily on a commuter train, which takes less than three hundred pages to divide the world neatly into ten major areas (with the odd omission of Australia and New Zealand), each covered in a freestanding chapter, seems like a relatively easy, painless means of getting up to speed.

So why, despite the undeniably fascinating subject matter, did I find this book so hard to read? It is partly because the “unifying theme” of “prisoners of geography” proves so woolly when applied to such “broad brush” chapters. The author continually refers to physical geography to explain differences between areas – why some have prospered while others are poverty-stricken, some stable while others are torn apart by conflict, some fragmented while others united, but many of his statements are open to challenge as being fatuous or contradictory. He cannot avoid slipping into the historical and cultural factors which affect global politics, and often they seem to outweigh geography in their influence. The term “prisoners” also seems a misnomer in more prosperous parts of the world like the US which he is adamant remains “the planet’s most successful country” without addressing its high levels of inequality, some of which are the result of geography.

So, because the book is so wide-ranging, it becomes oversimplified to the point of distorting facts, and arbitrary as regards the points selected so that important factors are omitted or not given due weight. Too often, the author drifts into a dry recital of facts, with a lack of analysis, which he has to lighten up with verbal gimmicks: “How do you solve a problem like Korea?”

“The ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics” prove to be nothing of the kind: just location maps to remind you where the countries covered by a chapter are. Also, why does the untitled map of Western Europe include an undifferentiated Eastern Europe, and why does the latter receive so little coverage as an area in which people have been affected so much over the centuries by their geographical location?

Journalists often make a better job of explaining a country or region than specialists, because they do not get bogged down in detail, and know how to present information and ideas in an accessible way. An example of this is Martin Sixsmith’s recent “Russia: A 1000-Year Chronicle of the Wild West”. The problem with “Prisoners of Geography” is that it is too superficial, and does not have a sufficiently coherent theme or framework to hold a wide-ranging approach together. This book has been well-promoted, but is in fact much less insightful and enlightening than it could have been.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics

“Fire in the Blood” by Irène Némirovsky -Poignant, insightful writing that puts others in the shade

This is my review of Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky.

After years of wandering in exotic places, dissipating his inheritance on unsuccessful schemes which leave him unable to repay debts to his kindly relatives Hélène and François, and forced to sell land to the miserly old Duclos who has married the young, penniless possible gold-digger Brigitte, Silvio has returned to his home village of Issy-L’Évêque in Burgundy, where the author herself once lived briefly in the 1930s.

Observing the world with a shrewd and cynical detachment, Silvio suspects that Colette, the vivacious young daughter of Helene and François may regret her marriage to Jean, the sensitive young miller. When Jean is found drowned after an inexplicable accident, a chain of events is set in motion, revealing the passions which lie beneath the surface of a closed, conservative community whose members maintain a rock-like solidarity to suppress any whiff of scandal: keeping up appearances, guarding one’s privacy and leading a quiet life are more powerful driving forces than admitting the truth and ensuring that justice is done.

This short novel hooked me from the first page. It is a psychological drama written with great clarity, which I believe has been retained in the English version. Irene Némirovsky is remarkable both for her insight into human nature and her acute sense of culture and place. Without having experienced life in a French village, one is convinced of the truth of her perceptions, as when Silvio describes how the bourgeoisie, from which he comes do not stand out from the ordinary people in their attitudes, working their land and not giving a fig about anyone else. Living behind their triple-locked doors, their drawing rooms may be stuffed with furniture, but they live in the kitchen to save on fuel. In another evocative scene, Silvio captures the beauty of nightfall – the subtle change and reduction in colours, “ne laissant qu’une nuance intermédiaire entre le gris de perle et le gris de fer”. But all the outlines are perfectly sharp: the cherry trees, the little low wall, the forest and the cat’s head as it plays between his feet and bites his shoe.

Laden with nostalgia, the story contrasts mature, companionable love with “the fire in the blood” of youthful passion, posing the question as to which of these states is more “real”, and necessary for us to have lived to the full. How often does love make us lie to each other, and delude ourselves? When reminded in old age of past passions, how can we deal with feelings of regret and jealousy.

It was neither the somewhat stereotyped characters nor some contrived incidents that disappointed me initially, but rather the abrupt and unexpected ending. However, since the novel was not discovered until 2007, decades after the author’s tragic death in Auschwitz which denied her the opportunity to edit and complete it, we should be thankful that it survived at all and be impressed that what is probably a “first draft” should be so well-written and tightly structured, and have the power to absorb and move us so strongly. Also, the ambiguity of the last sentence leaves us free to speculate on the final outcome, on what the author intended to write next and adds to the sense that we may never fully know and understand each other in our complex and fluid emotions.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


Fire in the Blood
 

“Chaleur du sang” by Irene Nemirovsky -Writing full of poignant insight puts others in the shade

This is my review of Chaleur du sang (Collection Folio) by Irene Nemirovsky.

After years of wandering in exotic places, dissipating his inheritance on unsuccessful schemes which leave him unable to repay debts to his kindly relatives Hélène and François, and forced to sell land to the miserly old Duclos who has married the young, penniless possible gold-digger Brigitte, Silvio has returned to his home village of Issy-L’Évêque in Burgundy, where the author herself once lived briefly in the 1930s.

Observing the world with a shrewd and cynical detachment, Silvio suspects that Colette, the vivacious young daughter of Helene and François may regret her marriage to Jean, the sensitive young miller. When Jean is found drowned after an inexplicable accident, a chain of events is set in motion, revealing the passions which lie beneath the surface of a closed, conservative community whose members maintain a rock-like solidarity to suppress any whiff of scandal: keeping up appearances, guarding one’s privacy and leading a quiet life are more powerful driving forces than admitting the truth and ensuring that justice is done.

This short novel hooked me from the first page. It is a psychological drama written with great clarity, which I believe has been retained in the English version. Irene Némirovsky is remarkable both for her insight into human nature and her acute sense of culture and place. Without having experienced life in a French village, one is convinced of the truth of her perceptions, as when Silvio describes how the bourgeoisie, from which he comes do not stand out from the ordinary people in their attitudes, working their land and not giving a fig about anyone else. Living behind their triple-locked doors, their drawing rooms may be stuffed with furniture, but they live in the kitchen to save on fuel. In another evocative scene, Silvio captures the beauty of nightfall – the subtle change and reduction in colours, “ne laissant qu’une nuance intermédiaire entre le gris de perle et le gris de fer”. But all the outlines are perfectly sharp: the cherry trees, the little low wall, the forest and the cat’s head as it plays between his feet and bites his shoe.

Laden with nostalgia, the story contrasts mature, companionable love with “the fire in the blood” of youthful passion, posing the question as to which of these states is more “real”, and necessary for us to have lived to the full. How often does love make us lie to each other, and delude ourselves? When reminded in old age of past passions, how can we deal with feelings of regret and jealousy.

It was neither the somewhat stereotyped characters nor some contrived incidents that disappointed me initially, but rather the abrupt and unexpected ending. However, since the novel was not discovered until 2007, decades after the author’s tragic death in Auschwitz which denied her the opportunity to edit and complete it, we should be thankful that it survived at all and be impressed that what is probably a “first draft” should be so well-written and tightly structured, and have the power to absorb and move us so strongly. Also, the ambiguity of the last sentence leaves us free to speculate on the final outcome, on what the author intended to write next and adds to the sense that we may never fully know and understand each other in our complex and fluid emotions.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


Chaleur du sang (Collection Folio)
 

The imponderable bloom of life and relationships

This is my review of At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell.

I read this popular philosophy in search of enlightenment on a fundamental but elusive theme: “the nature of being”.

Sarah Bakewell is strong on anecdotal biography, linked to a vivid sense of time and place. Sartre with his “down-turned grouper lips.. and eyes pointing in different directions..but if you forced yourself to stick with the left eye, you would invariably find it watching you with warm intelligence”. When held as a POW by the Germans, “his eyes gave him his escape route”, in the improbable form of a medical pass to leave the camp for treatment. Yet he missed the comradeship of being forced into close quarters with other prisoners. It filled him with fear to enter a Parisian café to observe “the few drinkers… more distant than the stars…each entitled to a huge section of bench…these men shimmering… within their tubes of rarefied light seem inaccessible to me”. Then he enraged his soul-mate Simone de Beauvoir by criticising her for having given in to the practicalities of life under Occupation, by buying tea on the black market, and signing a paper to certify that “she was not a Jew or a Freemason”.

I liked the illustrations which, being untitled, are open to one’s own interpretation: the influential Heidegger and Husserl, his former mentor and the “father of phenomenology” (definable as “the ways we experience things”), standing on a sunny slope against a background of wooded hills. Are the two men arguing over their different viewpoints, or exchanging polite banalities to mask how far they have grown apart?

The author ends the first chapter with useful if partial definitions of what existentialists do, in their concern with “individual, concrete human existence”. Individuals are responsible for all their actions, in a world where, as Sartre realised to his initial horror, everything is “contingent” and “it could all have happened a different way”, if individuals had taken alternative courses of action.

The author sheds light on some difficult ideas like Sartre’s “specific nothingness” with the example that when one has made an appointment in a café to meet a friend, the most important factor is the absence of that person. She is good on analysing the importance of Simone de Beauvoir’s arguably undervalued “The Second Sex” and the theories of the polymath philosopher-cum-psychologist Merleau-Ponty, also underestimated. His ideas may seem more accessible than most since they are underpinned with a scientific knowledge of neurology. It is easy to relate with a sense of relief to his views that an understanding of child psychology is essential to sound philosophy, that we need to study perception scientifically to make sense of the connection between our consciousness and the world around us. We have to connect socially with other people to exist in a meaningful way ourselves, rather than speculate about the reality of existence external to our own, as many philosophers have done.

Sarah Bakewell refers frequently to the opaqueness, and radical shifts in thinking of Sartre, Heidegger and Levinas. Sometimes, this seems like an excuse for the inability to present a coherent explanation of the essence of their ideas. With what often seems like the prime aim of entertaining us, complex theories are fragmented into bite-sized chunks, with explanations descending into a kind of woolly gimmickry which falls apart under close scrutiny: “If you had to sum up Heidegger’s opening sally in ‘Being and Time’ in one word, that word might be ‘wow!’..As a fresh starting point for philosophy, this ‘wow!’ is itself a kind of Big Bang. It’s also a big snub for Husserl… and his followers…..They have forgotten the brute reality on which all of us ought to be constantly stubbing our toes….Wake up, phenomenologists! Remember being – out there, in here, under you, above you, pressing in on you. Remember the things themselves, and remember your own being!”

Although I found parts of this book very interesting and felt the need to reread it, I also doubted whether this would actually add to my understanding. Apart from the fact that a chapter or two pulling together the essential theories would have been useful, I cannot escape the sense that much of the philosophy covered is highly arbitrary and subjective. It may appeal to one’s emotions, like Heidegger’s “notions of humans as a clearing into which Being emerges into the light”, but such ideas merge into each other in a muddled morass.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

At The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

Becoming the people we should always have been

This is my review of The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain.

In the aftermath of World War 2, young Gustav Perle grows up in a quiet Swiss town, stoically trying to make sense of adult behaviour, win the love of his widowed mother Emilie, and live up to her exhortation to “master himself….be courageous, stay separate and strong…. like Switzerland”. Emilie is understandably depressed as she struggles to make ends meeting, making cheese and cleaning the Church, but is clearly ambivalent as regards her husband Erich, whose untimely death remains a mystery to Gustav. Although acknowledging Erich’s moral stance in saving Jews from the Nazis, she clearly resents the financial hardship and loss of status which this inflicted on his family, and she cannot warm to Anton, the Jewish boy who becomes Gustav’s best friend, despite the marked differences in their lifestyles and personalities. Anton is sensitive, a gifted pianist with wealthy, indulgent parents, but he proves unable to overcome his nerves sufficiently to achieve his ambition to become an internationally acclaimed soloist.

This moving and well-constructed books has three sections, like musical movements. For me the most powerful is the first part, the skilful and touching portrayal of childhood, and how we are influenced by our relationships. The second section takes us back in time to learn the truth about Emilie's and Erich's marriage, and the last leaps on half a century to the late’90s when Gustav and Anton are having to face up to the paths they have followed in life, and decide whether and how to change before it is too late.

Rose Tremain is an accomplished storyteller, capable of weaving an evocative, thought-provoking drama with a cast of complex characters out of a few strands of plot. Only occasionally in the middle chapters did the tone teeter on the brink of sentimentality, or the dialogue appear a little stilted as if translated from the German. A few plot details grated on me as unconvincing, such as the manner and timing of Erich’s death, or the two young boys’ game in the ruined sanatorium.

This is literary fiction with an eye to commercial success i.e. well-written, nuanced and thought-provoking combined with tragedy tempered by a feel-good soft centre and a few passages of raunchy sex – a page turner which is also worth reading.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Gustav Sonata

No longer knowing where the real points are

This is my review of A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion.

Cynical and hard-boiled Grace Strasser-Mendana is the widow of the former President of the coconut palm Central American Republic of Boca Grande. Having married into one of the island’s “three or four solvent families”, she stays on to manage affairs for her seemingly weak and incompetent relatives, instead of returning to her native North America. Perhaps because she is an anthropologist by training, she becomes fascinated by the Charlotte Douglas, a “norteamericana” like herself who has come to Boca Grande as a tourist, as part of the abortive search for her daughter Marin, who has unaccountably rejected her privileged background to become an anti-capitalist terrorist. Charlotte seems neurotic, at times even crazy, by turns either aimlessly drifting through life via casual affairs or throwing herself with bursts of frenetic energy into do-gooding missions.

At first, I expected this to be a Graham Greene style political-cum-psychological drama. I may have missed something, but for me it turned out to be an endless portrayal of Charlotte’s intense and troubled relationship with two dominating husbands: needy, abusive even violent when drunk, Warren, who perhaps uses alcohol to blank out mental pain and sickness, and the suave, wise-cracking, control-freak lawyer Leonard.

I was initially entertained by the spiky dialogues at cross-purposes, which read like a bizarre mixture of Coward and Pinter, mini playscripts in the series of short chapters. However, once I “had the measure” of the mainly quite unappealing characters, their flaws exaggerated to the point of caricature, there seemed to be no further development and I began to find the novel tedious. In the sketchy plot, many questions remain unanswered, but perhaps "what happens" isn't the point.

I have read that Joan Didion took great pains to hone her work, but although distinctive and original with some passages of remarkably expressive clarity, the overall effect is so contrived, with a mantra-like (prayer book-book like?) repetition of staccato phrases, often included more for rhythmic sound than sense, that it forms a barrier preventing real engagement with the characters. “Charlotte’s breakfasts at the Caribe. Charlotte went to the Caribe for breakfast every morning for a while. She went to the Caribe for breakfast because….” Or another paragraph hypnotically repeating the words “Porter” and “Pontchartrain”.

There is the additional niggling problem with the point of view, since writing in the first person, it is quite implausible that the narrator Grace can reproduce so precisely Charlotte's thoughts, experiences and intimate conversations with others – or perhaps we are meant to think that much of the story is in Grace's imagination.

I agree with those who have found the characters too superficial and cut off from normal “real life” for one to care about them, the only emotion being irritation over their self-absorption. It seems that Joan Didion herself led a somewhat artificial life staying and partying in the houses of Hollywood celebrities, drinking heavily, all of which may have led her to create scenes to which most readers find it hard to relate. We are sucked into anticipating the gradual revelation of plot fragments for us to piece together, but the tendency to tell us what is going to befall Charlotte is the death knell to dramatic tension.

I am left uncertain as to what the author was trying to say about the world through the medium of this unprepossessing cast with their entertaining if stylised, sterile conversations. Although she may have chosen to write novels because of the scope they gave her to be inventive, her sardonic, detached style seems to lend itself more to biting journalism.

While continually sensing her talent, I became impatient with the brittle, shallow use to which it is put.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

A Book of Common Prayer

“His Bloody Project” by Graeme Macrae Burnet”: A pitted grindstone

This is my review of His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrae Burnet.

In 1869, Scottish Highlands crofter’s son Roderick Macrae freely confesses to the murder of three members of a neighbouring family, including “Lachlan Broad” who has bullied his father and driven him further into poverty. What could be unbearably bleak proves to be an absorbing and intriguing literary thriller, a form of “whydunnit.

We are given a number of differing viewpoint: the statements by residents of the remote coastal hamlet of Culdie; the lengthy and surprisingly articulate written account of Roderick Macrae himself, making it clear why his schoolteacher was so keen to for him to continue his studies; medical reports with an extract from “Travels in the Border-Lands of Lunacy, by an “acknowledged authority in the then nascent discipline of Criminal Anthropology”, chilling in its unconscious disdain for the “lower classes”; the drama of the courtroom trial and final epilogue on its aftermath.

All this provides a vivid impression of the harsh life in the remotely beautiful setting “with its magnificent vista of the isles of Raasay and Skye”. To an outsider, the houses of Culdie could be mistaken for “byres or pig-sties”, their rough thatch reeking with peat smoke, giving them the appearance of “gently smouldering”. We see the rigid class divide between the landowners and the crofters, with middle men like Lachlan Broad used to extract rents and dues, no questions asked as to methods. So, Lachlan can arbitrarily insist that Roderick and his father return to the water the seaweed they have spent a laborious morning cutting from the rocks to fertiliser their meagre plot.

With its relentless chain of cause and effect, this tale raises interesting questions of how matters might have turned out differently. What if Roderick’s father had possessed the flexibility and imagination to let him travel to Glasgow to be educated? What if Roderick’s two uncles had not been killed in a fishing accident years ago, thus reducing the family’s earning power? Is Roderick mad, bad, or a victim of circumstance? Should he have been judged sane or insane at the time, the latter being his only means of escaping the gallows, for a living fate which could well prove worse? How would we judge him now, with our supposedly more enlightened understanding of human psychology?

The focus on Roderick contrasts with the sketchy development of his sister Jetta’s personality and her parallel fate. Perhaps this is intentional, showing the casual sexism of their society.

My sole minor criticism is that virtually all the characters seem to communicate in a similar style with an unlikely degree of fluency. Yet I agree that the author was wise not to attempt to write dialogues in a Scottish dialect, which would have been distracting. A useful glossary is provided for the small number of local words e.g. “flaughter” meaning spade, but would have been better placed clearly at the beginning.

This well-written, skilfully constructed, subtle and thought-provoking novel deserves its shortlisting for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars


His Bloody Project
 

After humorous opening lacks focus and “misses the mark”

This is my review of Uniques by Dominique Paravel.

“I shouldn’t be here” – the mantra of an overqualified supermarket employee charged with monitoring the security cameras. At least this affords the amusement of observing how people deal with the problem of items accidentally put the wrong trolley, or noticing a little old lady mischievously placing tea in the frozen fish section and salmon with the champagne. This opening chapter is not developed further, but is followed by a series of less humorous portrayals of somewhat alienated individuals caught in some of the depressing aspects of modern life: a single mother with a vicious boss pressurising her to meet targets in a call centre, or a human resources manager forced to lay off staff in a textile factory so that work can be outsourced to cheaper Far Eastern labour.

The only common factor holding the book together is that the rather stereotyped characters live in the same Lyons suburb of Vaise, which has grown up on the muddy banks of the Saône, where their paths sometimes cross, often with them barely noticing each other. The book’s structure is rather odd: Part One with four individual portraits; Part Two with an artist brought up in Lyons, consumed with nostalgia on her return there for the display of her artwork “Uniques”; Part Three a brief history of Vaise which might have been better integrated into the other sections, concluding with final fleeting images of the original four characters, with a few extra ones thrown in. This fragmented approach with no clear plot, left me feeling unengaged. Situations are too often exaggerated and lacking in subtlety, sitting uneasily with the occasional flights into surreal fantasy. The continual flipping in style between farce and poetry is also distracting at times.

The highly praised author has won prizes in France, but this feels like the work of an inexperienced fiction writer without the redeeming “Mockingbird” factor. It was worth reading in French for the practice, but I would not have bothered to persevere with it in translation.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Uniques