This is my review of Snowdrops by A. D. Miller.

I can understand why "Snowdrops" reached the Booker Shortlist, but also why some people think is should not have done so.

On the plus side, Miller puts his firsthand knowledge of Russia to good use by recreating the tasteless materialism and perpetual undercurrent of violence and sleaze in the raw capitalism following the collapse of Communism. He describes well how individuals are inexorably contaminated by exposure to corruption, even if they think themselves to be morally superior, or immune.

In what turns out to be a psychological drama rather than a crime thiller, the narrator Nicholas, a thirty something commercial lawyer posted from London to Moscow, builds up tension as he is gets ever more entangled with the beautiful Masha and her younger "sister" Katya. Even though he suspects they are not what they seem, he suppresses any doubts and passively goes along with them in providing legal support for what is on the surface a simple property exchange without questioning their actions.

I like the introduction to a new vocabulary: "minigarch" for a rich Russian who isn't quite in the oligarch league, "krysha" for the shady character who provides protection and "fixes" things, or "elitny" to describe a smart restaurant or club. Miller is also good on all the different kinds of snow – from the light, damp October snow called "mokri sneg", through the deep heavy snow falling overnight "like a practical joke", the mounds of snow which make walking an obstacle, and finally the end-of-May snow… by which God lets the Russians know he hasn't finished with them yet". He brings home how the weather dominates Russians' lives through the course of the almost unbearably long and cold winters and the all too short hot summers.

There are some striking descriptions of places e.g. of the Moscow river, "the ice on the river was buckling and cracking, great plates of it rubbing and jostling each other, as the water shrugged it off, a vast snake sloughing of its skin."

Likewise, the sharp descriptions of people e.g. of a man who has allowed himself to become corrupted, " He was a short, pale man with thick hair, thick Soviet glasses and worried eyes. I suppose if you wanted to you could say he looked like a sort of compressed and stunted version of me."

On the down side, I wondered whether it was advisable to tell the reader quite so often that certain characters are liars or cheats, or to imply what is about to happen. It might have been more powerful to have left the reader to deduce all this, and only have Nicholas acknowledge his own culpability at the end. As it is, the climax of the book proves underwhelming, like a balloon that fails to burst with a startling bang because so much air has leaked out of it already.

Overall, this is an impressive "first novel". Much of the writing is good, as is the basic plot idea. However it is a quick, absorbing, mildly thought-provoking and moving read rather than the shattering emotional experience it could have been.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster.

“The Brooklyn Follies” reminds me what a skilful wordsmith Paul Auster is: he can capture startling insights, create intriguing characters and describe a beautiful spring day with memorable originality.

Page after page is a pleasure to read until some unconvincing note trips the reader up.

This is the gently rambling tale of the sixty-year old Nathan, at a loose end after surviving a cancer scare, who decides to pass the time compiling “The Book of Human Folly”, a collection of every “blunder, ……. embarrassment , every idiocy, every foible and inane act” of his own and others’ lives. This is an opportunity for Auster both to exercise his fertile imagination, and to regale us with the lists of facts that he likes to record.

I enjoyed the first part of the book in which Nathan, revelling in his rediscovery of the diverse street life of Brooklyn, renews contact with Tom, the brilliant young nephew who has lost his way in life, and gets to know his flamboyant bookshop employer Harry who is not all that he seems, and who in due course reveals a risky plot to make himself rich. I liked their “deep”, but humorous philosophical discussions, in one chapter written like a play.

With the arrival of Nathan’s great-niece Lucy, pretending to be mute, I felt the plot begin to get ragged. Some opportunities for drama are missed, plotlines are resolved too quickly, or become frankly implausible, and I agree with reviewers who think Auster goes in for far too much “telling” rather than “showing”. It’s also just occurred to me that he may not be very good at portraying convincing female characters. I have come to the conclusion that he is not very interested in structuring a plot, creating suspense or working towards a grand denouement – he just loves playing with words and using them to create interesting situations or explore ideas as the fancy takes him, so that the parts are greater than the whole.

I appreciated his swipes at Bush Junior and manipulative American preachers. I was not so keen on the frequent lapses into a corny, wisecracking tone, perhaps meant to convey Nathan’s New York background.

This seems an intentionally lighthearted book, a kind of homage to Brooklyn, in which the follies of the characters rival the contents of Nathan’s unfinished book, but Auster can never totally dispense with the dark undercurrents of reflection on the meaning of life.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of The Help (Film Tie-In) by Kathryn Stockett.

"The Help" on which the film is based is a page-turner with its skilful coverage of human resilience and the sowing of the seeds of rebellion as prejudice begins to crack in 1960s Mississippi, told through the viewpoint of two black maids, Aibileen and Minnie, and Skeeter, an idealistic but naive young white woman with ambitions to become a writer.

In the film, a strong cast of actors bring to life the key characters in the book. Aibileen is the narrator, compassionate and shrewd beneath her subservient air, until writing about her experiences as a general dogsbody and nanny for a succession of white children finally releases her into a sense of freedom. Then there is Minnie, a brilliant cook, but unable to hold down a job because of her feisty talk – yet she allows herself to be beaten by her drunken husband. The villain of the piece is the ghastly, control-freak Hilly, who rules her simpering white "friends" with a rod of iron, with the power to destroy the livelihoods of black servants (not merely her own!) who displease her.

The film version of "The Help" is true to the essentials of the original in that it is a chastening reminder of the casual prejudice of the American South as recently as the 1960s, and is often very moving, yet the poignancy is leavened with a good deal of humour. In view of the complexity of the book's plot, it has been necessary to leave out or compress many details – thankfully not the scene of Minnie trying to hoover the dust off a huge stuffed grizzly bear in an old colonial house. These omissions tend to be disappointing if you have read the book before seeing the film. In particular, I would have liked more of the very moving tales which the maids have to tell.

The film finds time to show not just the main theme of the humiliation and unjust treatment of black Americans but also the discrimination against young white women, who are expected to have no ambition above hooking a man. Skeeter is hired by the local newspaper, but only to write a column on cleaning!

I found some of the black maids' dialogues hard to follow, which is a pity as in the book they are often very funny and full of insight.

Perhaps the film's ending is a touch too sentimental and neatly "sown up", some of the subtle depth of the original has been lost, but overall it is worth seeing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst.

Hollinghurst often reminds me of E.M.Forster with his nostalgia for the early C20 and his focus on the minute details of people's thoughts, observations of one another and interrelationships, all presented in well-crafted prose (apart from the odd clunky phrase like "she said carryingly").

Charismatic, arrogant and manipulative, the aristocratic Cecil Valance achieves a possibly undeserved popularity as a poet after his early death in the First World War. Can the truth of his life ever be told by biographers? This seems unlikely since even those who claim to know him have very different perceptions. In five separate sections separated by gaps of several years or even decades, the author aims to show the false nature of memory.

You could argue that Hollinghurst is daring in discarding many of the "conventions" of novel-writing. The development of a strong plot is given second place to what often reads like a series of short stories: portrayals of characters who make only brief appearances, or the description of quite minor incidents, evocative of past generations, but very amusing, ludicrous or in the style of a black comedy. The author tends to build up anticipation of a certain outcome, only for it not to occur, insofar as one can judge! Significant events are frequently no more than implied.

Although this book promises much, my growing suspicion that it would not deliver proved justified. It suffers from being too long, repetitive in its limited revelations and self-indulgent, not least in its campness – I grew tired of "blushing" and "giggling" men of all ages.

It does not bother me that most of the characters are very middle class , but there are certainly too many of them to relate to easily, and I was left feeling I had waded through an Oxford don's overblown soap opera fantasy.

I know that "the stranger's child" is a quotation from Tennyson's "In Memoriam" read aloud by Cecil in Part 1, and thanks to Roderick Blythe for explaining to me in the comment below its meaning in the title.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars