Books

“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque: Old at Twenty

This is my review of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Having read and seen so many books and films about war, I made the mistake of expecting this to have little to add apart from the different perspective of a First World War soldier on the German front. Written in the 1920s by a young journalist who fictionalises his own experiences of the futile lunacy of war, it soon proved to me its status as a classic.

What marks it out is the combination of a whole gamut of reactions, from the MASH-like scenes of cynical survival to moving scenes portraying the psychology of survival at the front. In the opening chapter, the eighty men out of a company of a hundred and fifty who have returned alive and uninjured from the front are delighted to find that the quartermaster has not been informed in time to reduce their supplies so they have double rations for a day. A young man is dying from his wounds in a field hospital, and a friend is mainly preoccupied with laying claim to his rather fine pair of boots.

Using the present tense to give events more immediacy, the narrator Paul describes the sinister nature of the front in apparently calm periods which may be shattered with no warning by shells and gas – how to survive he must throw himself instinctively to the earth, which may protect, bury alive or claim him for ever. He must kill or be killed without emotion to stay alive, feeling his most conscious hatred for the teachers who abused their authority by urging him to enlist, or the sadistic ex-postman, now Corporal who provided his training, none of them with any realistic first-hand experience of the front. The prospect of leave seems like heaven, until Paul realises that he can no longer relate to family and acquaintances, or any aspect of his past life. He can no longer read the books he used to treasure, and his academic education now seems useless.

The narrative makes very early on the telling point which recurs at the end: the fact that young men plucked from school to the battlefield have no clear framework of work, wife or children to which to return, should they survive. They are a generation cast in limbo: “if we go back…. we shall be weary, broken-down, burnt-out, rootless and devoid of hope. No one will understand us – we are superfluous even to ourselves.”

This well-translated novel is saved from unendurable sadness by the range and frequent black humour of incidents. It is one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war writing I have ever read. The saddest aspect is that, when he wrote it, Lemarque might still hope there would be no future struggles of this sort on such a scale.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

All Quiet on the Western Front

Why things happen

This is my review of Lila by Marilynne Robinson.

Marilynne Robinson's writing fascinates me. For a celebrated professional creative writer she has produced relatively few novels, of which three produced over a decade examine and rework the lives of two families in the quiet Iowan town of Gilead, each book focussing on the inner thoughts of a different character. Lila, a newcomer who has married the Reverend John Ames in his old age and borne him a son, is a minor figure in "Home" and "Gilead", but comes to the fore in this latest novel. Best read in turn with Lila last, to understand all the references, they can be treated as standalone novels.

Carried on a stream of consciousness which catches Lila's distinctive voice, we learn how she was abducted as a young child from a neglectful and possibly violent household by Doll, an itinerant casual worker. On the run for years from some real or imagined pursuer, they attach themselves to a small group who find jobs where they can in what sounds like the dustbowl America of the `30s, although the author is vague as to time and place. Despite having been barely tolerated by everyone apart from the protective Doll, Lila retains a nostalgic longing for her childhood, lived mostly out in the open, with a keen sense of nature and the seasons, and what little they all had shared in common.

By comparison, in the reverend's comfortable old house, with his kind and patient attention, she often feels lonely and reluctant to confess details of her past for fear this may turn him against her. It appears he has married her out of his own loneliness and a sense of her reflective nature, drawn to the same spiritual questions which perplex him. Perhaps he feels a desire to give practical support to a woman in need who has endured hardship through no fault of her own, outside the safe shell of his own life troubled only by self-concocted theological dilemmas. We can never be any surer about his motives than Lila, for everything is seen through her eyes. The book is full of irony: the old man never grasps that she likes to read Exekiel because its fire and brimstone images capture a sense of her own past life. He is amused by her announcement that she never wants to have a credenza in the house, not realising that this was the piece of furniture in which a whorehouse madam kept locked up the few possessions of the young women she exploited.

Since every phrase appears crafted with care, the book needs to be read slowly, rereading some sentences aloud to capture the full meaning by stressing the right word. Although it has been described as one of the saddest books imaginable, the beauty, expressiveness and wry humour of the style make the bleak aspects tolerable. Lila's pregnancy also strikes a continual optimistic beat. The mistrust of John Ames' old friend the Reverend Boughton, and likely bewildered disapproval of parishioners, held in check by respect for the old clergyman, are only hinted at in this subtlest of novels.

If I have any criticism it is over the repetition of some points, although this could be intended to convey how the mind keeps revisiting old ground. In the same way, the very muted ending could reflect the reality of most people's experience. The author's Calvinist background exerts a strong influence, which could deter readers with no biblical knowledge or belief. As an atheist who accepts that Christianity is deeply embedded in mid-west American society, I would say that this book is worth reading if you appreciate skilful writing and have an interest in psychology, how people think and interrelate, often failing to communicate, and how they come to terms with intimations of mortality and the transiency of both pleasure and pain.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Lila

Setting the path straight

This is my review of House of Ashes by Monique Roffey.

Inspired by the abortive 1990 political coup in Trinidad, about which I am now embarrassed to have registered so little, the author creates a similar drama in the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen. We are introduced first to the simple yet bookish and spiritual Ashes, haunted by the violent death of his freedom fighter brother in an earlier uprising. Under the influence of “The Leader”, charismatic head of a religious cult, Ashes is sucked into a plan to force concessions from the apparently corrupt and neglectful government, by occupying the main parliament building and taking hostages, including the Prime Minister.

The point of view switches between Ashes and Mrs Aspasia Garland, Minister for the Environment, and one of the more sympathetic of the hostages. In a situation which rapidly deteriorates and clearly cannot end well, the author uses her characters to explore their contrasting attitudes, the different experiences which have shaped them including colonisation, their developing perception of events and the way they handle the psychological trauma of a siege.

This reminds me strongly of another highly praised novel about a hostage-taking in a developing country, “Bel Canto”, yet I think “The House of Ashes” is technically superior in being more realistic and focussed on the complex issues of power, inequality and motivation without getting side-tracked into somewhat sentimental romances. On the other hand, what has the makings of an outstanding novel is undermined for me by the author’s tendency to repeat and over-labour points. It would have been much more powerful to have finished at the end of Part V with at most a brief epilogue, that is, omitting the final section, entitled “V1 L’Anse Verte 23 Years Later”. It is as if Monique Roffey is so absorbed in her characters that she cannot resist continuing to supply and analyse details long after the reader should have been left to reflect and reach his or her own conclusions. A minor irritant for me is the overuse of the West Indian term “steupsing”, the tendency to make a noise by sucking in air to express annoyance and derision. Yet perhaps this, and the patois which I enjoyed, give the story greater authenticity, demonstrating Roffey's genuine deep firsthand knowledge of life in Trinidad. Certainly, she creates vivid images of the dusty rundown city, the lush vegetation and Leatherback turtles dragging themselves up onto remote beaches to lay their myriads of eggs – from which most of the hatchlings are doomed to die in the struggle to survive.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

House of Ashes

The more we strive the murkier it becomes

This is my review of Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd.

Actor son of a famous, long-dead thespian, Lysander Rief travels to Freud's Vienna to seek the advice of an English psychoanalyst on a sensitive personal problem. Since it is 1913, we know that the course of his life is about to be transformed for the worse, but before that, fate strikes a very different unexpected blow. With his fertile imagination and gift for spinning words into vivid and original descriptions or moments of farce with no apparent effort, William Boyd creates an entertaining read for the first half. He employs interesting little devices, as in the opening chapter where Lysander is introduced as he might appear to a stranger, although the next scene shows how many of the assumptions based on appearances are false. At other points, the author presents the dialogue in the form of a play, reflecting not only Lysander's employment, but also the way he and those around him are often playing a part in "real" life. The downside of this somewhat flippant, facetious approach is that at times we may not care about the characters' troubles as much as we should.

It is not until halfway through that the novel becomes the spy thriller vaunted on the front cover, and for me it is not improved in the process. At this point, the plot is too close to a Buchanish derring-do of over-complicated implausible events. I began to lose interest, but read on in the hopes of a satisfying dénouement which is in fact less surprising and "clever" than some of the twists on the way. Perhaps the strongest aspect is that Lysander is left a sad and wiser man accepting life's ambiguity, "we try to see clearly but what we see is never clear and is never going to be", one "happier with the dubious comfort of the shadows".

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Waiting for Sunrise

By chance or design

This is my review of Darwin’s Pictures: Views of Evolutionary Theory, 1837-1874 by Julia Voss,Lori Lantz.

The eye-catching cover showing a pair of stylised hummingbirds on a water lily masks a well-translated from German if at times long-winded academic exploration of the evolutionary theory revealed in the pictures produced by Darwin and his contemporaries.

A prolific collector of specimens on his five year voyage on the Beagle, Darwin often lacked the knowledge to identify them correctly. So, it was the ornithologist Gould back in London who accurately classified the famous Galapagos finches with their distinctive beaks which provided early evidence for evolution, of which Gould himself ironically became an opponent, in the belief that such beautiful creatures as hummingbirds must have been designed by God.

Endearing in his shortcomings, Darwin failed to appreciate the importance of the locals' observation that the tortoises on each Galapagos island had a distinctive patterned shell. So, the creatures were taken aboard The Beagle for their meat and the shells discarded over the side. On his own admission a poor draughtsman, Darwin spent years back home constructing messy but ground-breaking diagrams to show evolution, such as the foldout chart from the 1859 Origin of Species, with neither origin nor end, but a focus on chance variation with the adaption and flourishing of some species at the expense of others. Unable to accept such vagueness, followers like Haeckel developed this idea into a clearly drawn tree culminating at the top with man, with gorilla, orangutan and gibbon on branches just below – a clear hierarchy which Darwin did not emphasise himself. It is fascinating to realise that gorillas were only being discovered by explorers at around the 1850s, so that the idea of humans somehow evolving from such a fearsome beast was hard to take in a society brought up to believe that man had been created by God only a few thousands of years before.

Although not very assertive in speaking out against religious beliefs, Darwin was troubled by the influential Duke of Argyll's clam that the perfection of the peacock's tail could only be explained by the existence of a Creator. Through painstaking drawings of patterns on the "argus pheasants" tail feathers, Darwin convinced himself that not only could these patterns evolve, but this perfection itself was a myth.

This book could have been made more accessible for the general reader, but it was probably the author's prime and understandable aim to further her academic reputation. As it is, the book provides some fascinating information on not only evolution but also Victorians' attitudes towards their origins and also how emotions might be expressed by both them and the domestic animals they had increasingly begun to keep – another research topic pursued by the ever-inquisitive Darwin.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Darwin’s Pictures: Views of Evolutionary Theory, 1837-1874

An unlived life

This is my review of Pedigree (Folio) by Patrick Modiano.

The publication of a debut novel in his early twenties set Modiano on course for his unexpected winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature almost half a century later. “A Pedigree” differs from his other novels, often attacked as the same tale retold, in being an autobiography of his first twenty-one years. Yet it could be said it is in the same vein as the others, being in essence part of an ongoing search for identity.

In a postscript, he describes how his first two decades formed a life which did not feel like his own – “tout défilait en transparence and je ne pouvais pas encore vivre ma vie”. He portrays this sense of disengagement with “a simple film of facts and gestures” in which there is nothing to confess or clarify, he has no interest in introspection or examining his conscience. The more things are obscure or inexplicable, the more interest they hold for him, whereas he tends to look for mysteries where there are none. The only event which Modiano admits to having affected him deeply is the death of his brother, aged ten, for which he provides no explanation.

As a result, the prose is often reduced to reeling off lists of his mother’s friends, his father’s business associates, the books he has read, and so on, a tendency also very noticeable in “Dora Bruder”, the only other book of his I have read. The problem with this approach is that it makes for an intolerably boring read.

Modiano’s early life was clearly dysfunctional and in many respects sad. Yet this must also have been very significant in forming him as a person and a writer, and could surely have been presented in a much more moving and gripping way. Estranged from early on, his parents occupied two apartments, one above the other, with a connecting internal staircase which was initially walled in and then destroyed when the animosity grew more intense. Modiano’s mother was a Flemish actress with a maternal love bypass, often so strapped for cash that she begged from friends or encouraged her son to steal goods for sale. She is portrayed as almost cruel in her neglectfulness, yet her friendship with the avant garde writer Queneau may have given Modiano the vital break in his writing career.

By contrast, his Jewish father was insensitive in his control-freakery, dismissing his son’s literary ambitions and bent on giving him a good academic education, yet always in grim boarding schools. Modiano wonders what drove this obsession to get his son out of his life on his own terms, and imagines “une autre vie” in which as adults they could have walked openly arm in arm, the father delighting in his son’s success, the son discovering details of his father’s mysterious path. Yet, the father’s Jewish origins must also have shaped Modiano’s writing. Escaping deportation from Paris in an undercover life selling items on the black market, the father went on to become a financial backer of shady deals, which cannot have been very successful since the bailiffs sometimes came to call.

The book contains some striking passages which break the mould of tedium when least expected, but for me these are pearls in a barren, disjointed series of lists and descriptions which make a short novel seem interminable. The ideas behind Modiano’s work, the attempt to write a different type of novel are interesting, but reaching the end left me with a sense of relief, akin to no longer being poked in the eye.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

Pedigree (Folio)

Convainquant tout l’auditoire avec des preuves convaincantes

This is my review of Difficultes expliquees du francais…for English speakers: Livre by Francois Rabelais.

This is not for beginners as it is a rather intense and dry way of learning French from scratch, but a useful revision and gap-plugger guide for someone like me who studied A Level years ago.

I like the systematic approach of devoting each of the forty-six short chapters to a specific aspect of grammar, each broken down into main learning points. However, it would be helpful to have the answers supplied in the same book, with perhaps a bit of discussion where "the correct response" is open to debate, or depends on the circumstance.

Also, it might have been useful to indicate "more advanced" points and "trickier questions" to avoid more experienced students wasting time on questions testing basic knowledge

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Difficultes expliquees du francais…for English speakers: Livre

Watching paint dry on the house that Jack built

This is my review of Dora Bruder (Folio (Gallimard)) by Patrick Modiano.

In an example of "autofiction", "fictionalizing a real event in a writer's life", Modiano is obsessed for years by his chance discovery in a Paris newspaper dating from December 1941 of a "missing person's notice" for the fifteen-year-old Dora Bruder. She is the only daughter of Jewish immigrants who have sent her to a local Catholic boarding school perhaps partly in an attempt to protect her. Half-Jewish himself, the author readily identifies with the poignancy of her position in seizing a brief freedom before the largescale "round-up" of Jews, including women and children, the following year.

Modiano embarks on a forensic study of records to find out more about her, made hard by the widespread destruction of documents once it was clear that the Nazis had lost. He fills the gaps with speculation which I often found irritating since it is based on such thin data: did she travel between home and school by metro, with or without her parents, and by which stations? As he traces the streets she must have frequented, repeatedly wandering them himself in a mood of reflective nostalgia, I began to wish he had included a few maps and photographs. With his interest extending to her Jewish neighbours, he notes how large areas of the locality have been demolished as if in an attempt to erase some of the guilt of French involvement in the holocaust. At the same time, he manages to weave in experiences from his own troubled teenage, even drawing parallels with his brief arrest for causing a "breach of the peace" with his father and his running away from home. He is annoyingly vague about these events, for which ironically he has the details.

There is great potential in his approach of trying to piece together the past, exploring half-memories and lingering influences of previous lives conducted in streets which are partly remarkably unchanged, partly derelict, partly superimposed by a new wave of construction and a heedless modern existence. It could be argued that the factual description and heavy reliance on speculation highlight the pathos of the theme: that people could be deported to Auchwitz for omitting to wear a yellow star often enough for mean-spirited neighbours to notice. Yet for me, the banality and most of all the excessive repetition of details were at times intolerable. Modiano's insistence on providing several times over, for instance, precise addresses and information on whether street numbers are odd or even made me wonder if he had OCD. Detractors have criticised the fact that many of Modiano's novels have the same basic approach of gathering information to trace the past of a missing person, and this deters me from reading more of his work, apart from his autobiographical "Un Pedigree" (for another book group) although his straightforward prose is good practice for improving one's French.

Some reviewers have compared Modiano's work to Sebald's "Austerlitz", which for me was a much more striking, impressively original and moving work, more worthy, I would have said, of a Nobel Prize.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Dora Bruder (Folio (Gallimard))

Seeing the wood for the trees

This is my review of Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs): The Quest for Fame by John Guy.

The "Penguin Monarchs" series sets out to provide a separate concise and readable introduction to each of the British rulers from Athelstan to Elizabeth ll, written by a different specialist in each case. Well-known for his accessible coverage of the Tudor period, John Guy has chosen to focus on Henry's quest for fame. This was not achieved in quite the fashion intended, since he is mainly infamous for his often mistreated six wives, whereas his desire to be crowned in Paris as the rightful King of France or to become the "the arbiter of international disputes" came to nothing.

Perhaps because the details are quite condensed, the author succeeds in highlighting some key aspects of Henry's personality and the motivation for his actions. Charismatic in his youth, handsome, shrewd, interested in the arts yet also athletic, prepared to promote competent men of lowly origin like Wolsey or Cromwell, he could have left a positive legacy. Yet, childhood experiences of Yorkist rebellions triggered the fear which bred his almost paranoid mistrust of others, perhaps also fed by his calculating father's cynical example. With the additional effects of the physical excesses which ruined his health, and the impatience and arrogance which made some see him as "the most dangerous and cruel man in the world", inevitably many of his policies became corrupted.

To free England from papal authority and end the greed of the great monasteries may have been beneficial in the long-term, but these ideas were the unintended by-product of Henry's obsession to find a way to divorce an infertile wife for one who could provide the male heir needed to secure not only his dynasty but the security of the realm. Also, to use the monks' plundered wealth to finance unnecessary and abortive wars or to execute those who would not renounce the old faith were indefensible acts. Henry's concern to judge people via the legal system and to legalise change using Parliament was laudable but the resultant manipulation of justice by his henchmen and crushing of true democracy were tyrannical. His belief that the King of England really was Christ's deputy ironically led him to seek to re-impose what was in effect a form of Catholicism without the Pope.

The author's concluding points are telling: Henry's vast and costly wardrobe designed to impress, Holbein's portraits which revealed "the sitter's soul" in an unflattering way which Henry perhaps fortunately failed to observe, and, in true "Ozymandias" style, the grandiose planned mausoleum left unassembled in a workshop until the bronze was sold off a century later – to fund a future war. There's also a useful bibliography at the end for those who wish to know more.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Henry VIII (Penguin Monarchs): The Quest for Fame

Only the truth

This is my review of The Undertaking by Audrey Magee.

The undertaking is Peter Faber's marriage "in absentia" to Katharina Spinell, a Berlin bank clerk whom he has yet to meet. The motives are mercenary on both sides: he wants ten days' leave from the Russian front which makes more sense in the following chapters recounting his ordeals in Kharkov and Stalingrad, whereas she is attracted by the prospect of his war pension if he dies. As loyal followers of the Reich, accepting Nazi propaganda without question, they are happy to fall in with Hitler's half-baked scheme for keeping up population growth at the height of battle. To their surprise, although perhaps partly because of the unreal situation, they develop the mutual love which motivates them to survive many vicissitudes.

Apart from this spark of hope, "The Undertaking" pulls no punches when it comes to the portrayal of war, as the pair begin to realise, in their very different situations, that German soldiers are not invincible against an inferior foe, the Russians are not the useless, cowardly peasants they have been led to expect, and the war will not be a rapidly won victory. It takes a while for the penny to drop with two main characters who are portrayed in a realistic rather than flattering and heroic light. Without any compunction, Katharina joins her callous parents in occupying a luxurious flat from which a Jewish family has been driven; on his "honeymoon", Faber takes part without question in the nocturnal eviction of Jews organised by the sinister fixer Doctor Reinart and he persists in believing a fellow soldier is a communist of doubtful loyalty because he is Russian – unable to grasp the tragedy that, as a Russian born in German territory, the poor man belongs nowhere. Yet the reader knows that Faber and Katharina will be punished more than they deserve, since Faber is on a march to Kharkov and Stalingrad, while Berlin is destined to be looted by drunken Russians who will perpetrate mass rape out of revenge.

The author is quite clever in glossing over historical details which does not matter, as she seems true to the spirit of the times: the moral confusion, the reduction of human beings to a basic animal state under duress, and the inescapable hand of chance. Gripping but bleak, well-constructed with some excellent dramatic moments and insights into the main characters' thinking, the story reaches a well-judged conclusion, which leaves the reader with a good deal to mull over.

"The Undertaking" is in my opinion superior to a number of recent novels which have received much more attention and hype.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Undertaking