This is my review of The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

The underlying grimness of the story is offset by the continual bubbling wit and humour in adversity, and the sheer rage over injustice which "The Help" inspires, until you begin to wonder uneasily if you are not guilty of other indefensible prejudices yourself.

It is easy to see what has made this a bestseller. Written confidently, with a clear, sound structure and pace for a first novel, "The Help" 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 and an idealistic but naive young white woman with ambitions to become a writer. Since Stockett was raised in this state, I have to assume that the speech patterns are authentic, and they add to the evocation of life in the South, and the vigour and humour of the tale.

Many of the characters are stereotypes – the ghastly, officious white Hilly, with the power to ostracise any "friend" who dares to question her views, and to destroy the livelihoods of black servants (not merely her own!) who displease her;the saintly, shrewd yet downtrodden black maid Aibileen; the voluptuous Miss Celia, unable to comprehend that, obeying Hilly's orders, the other wives shun her as trailer trash.

Some of the more dramatic scenes are a little clunky, but grimness and injustice are leavened with the continual comedy and irony in the language and sequence of incidents – ludicrous scenes such as Minnie's attempts to hoover clean a dusty old stuffed bear, some old family trophy. The sense of fear over the risk of a black maid being seen "in the wrong place" without her uniform, of a white person caught consorting with blacks socially, not to mention any attempts at free expression of opinion, is very palpable, and justified by the occasional examples of harsh and unjust punishment. I thought at times that this book would be soft-centred, and lapse into a corny romance for at least one character, but this is not the case.

"The Help" succeeds in reminding or informing a wide range of readers of the claustrophobic convention and bigotry of the confederate states, which trapped both blacks and whites for generations – obviously, the former suffered more serious effects – the daily humiliation, insult of being treated as invisible or unclean, and the risk of being falsely accused sacked and blacklisted, or worse for even a whiff of defiance.

If you can remember the '60s, it is chastening to realise that so much inequality and exploitation still operated unchecked, and interesting to see events which the characters have yet to realise are the dawning of a social revolution : Martin Luther King's great speech, the outbreak of the Vietnam war, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones hitting the airwaves, and the mass production of the miniskirt.

This is a good choice for a book group since it is likely to trigger a lively discussion. Was Miss Skeeter right to produce as she did a set of firsthand accounts of the lives of black maids in Jackson? Who really gained and lost from this subversive act, and how? How could the sharp-tongued Minnie accept for so long being beaten by her husband?

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy.

This first novel by Cormac McCarthy hooked me with its striking, poetical prose – reminding me of Dylan Thomas but much darker and more uncompromising. Although I have never visited Tennessee, the author conjures it in vivid images of the remote, mountainous landscape, the weather, wildlife and local people living close to the breadline but capable of unexpected acts of kindness. He also captures the rhythm and wry humour of their dialect.

The mainly short scenes shift backwards and forwards in time so that it is often hard to work out who the subjects are, what is happening and why. McCarthy has a gift for creating tension: when the bootlegger Sylder is driving an unwelcome hitch-hiker back to Knoxville you know that it will end in violence. But for the most part the plot is thin, and the author seems mainly interested in describing in minute detail incidents of daily life which he must have observed – the sensation of driving along roads "ferruling through dark forests of owl trees, bat caverns, witch covens"; a boy laying his first traps; an old man's relationship with his dog. On a more dramatic note are the memorable descriptions of the balcony of the Green Fly Inn cracking under the weight of drinkers to crash into the canyon below, or later the old man under gun attack in his shack, for reasons yet to be revealed to the rearder.

The story is very male-dominated – focus on sleazy bars, hunting, seeking vengeance through violence, plus the at times corny rapport between tough men and the young boys they teach to track coons with dogs, and seek to guide with homely wisdom.

Some initial scenes of the sex-or-is-it-rape-in-a-church variety were so distasteful to me that I nearly gave up, but I am glad that I persevered. This book requires the investment of time, the rereading of some of the more original poetic passages, the suspension of any expectations. I came to understand that what happens to the petty criminal Sylder, the boy, John Wesley, who unbeknown to both of them is the son of the man he was forced to kill, and the ancient recluse Alan Ownby who happens to observe some of Sylder's activities, matters less than the power of nature around them.

In short, I would recommend this not for the plot, but as an exercise in astonishing writing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Sunset Park by Paul Auster.

Paul Auster has a gift for describing the thoughts and motivations of introspective people, written in lucid, page-turning prose. I like the way he reveals the story from the viewpoint of different characters, so that one can see their differing perspectives and assessments of each other. Although superficially quite slight and loose, the plot is actually quite carefully structured, with occasional highly dramatic events, made all the more so for being unexpected. At the end, I suddenly saw the relevance of the (for me somewhat tedious) anecdotes of past baseball heroes, whose hopes have been dashed by chance events.

I was struck by the accuracy of Auster’s insight into the mindset of young people who, despite their education, choose to squat in abandoned properties, rejecting the mindless materialism of modern day America, and opt to live “for the present” in a country for which they fear the future, with the recent horrors of 9/11, the war in Iraq, suppression of human rights, and the recent banking crisis.

In some ways the book is like a series of short stories or “pen portraits”, loosely held together by the charismatic but troubled Miles Heller, who drifts through life, traumatised by his guilt over the death of his step-brother. Some of the characters are more convincing than others, but I suspect readers would disagree on which are better drawn. I was bored by the constant reference to baseball and Ellen’s erotic drawing, and a bit irritated by the arguably pretentious, “you need to be in the know”, analysis of Becket’s “Happy Days” and the sections on “being a writer” – on which authors tend to dwell too much. The book is clearly based on thorough research, and I felt that at times it includes too many lists – lists of famous baseball players, names of deceased celebrities in a cemetery, and so on. I was intrigued to realise that “The Best Years of Our Lives” is a real and highly regarded film from the period after WW2, and Auster convinces me of its relevance in making a contrast between attitudes then and now.

Overall, I agree with the emerging view that this is worth reading, but somehow falls short of brilliance, perhaps because Auster is so brimming over with reflections and observations on life that it is hard to marshall them into a “perfect whole” without reducing the momentum and “narrative drive” of the work, as a novel.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay.

The atrocity of the “Vél d’Hiv”, or rounding up by the French police of Jewish women and children in Paris for transportation to Auschwitz was unknown to me before this book was recommended. The horror is compounded in this story by the “twist” that the young heroine, Sarah, too young to understand the situation, manages to lock her little brother in a cupboard “for his own safety” so that he is not part of the transportation. Much of the ensuing tension of the first part of the book rests on the question of whether she will be able to escape and if she will succeed in being reunited with her brother. The drama is intercut with a modern day thread: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, married into a well-heeled and highly respectable Parisian family, is tasked to produce an article on the Vél d’Hiv. In the process, she discovers that her father-in-law grew up in the very apartment from which Sarah’s family was transported, and which her architect husband is “doing up” prior to moving there with her and their (somewhat irritatingly) precocious daughter Zoe. Julia’s growing sense of disquiet and preoccupation with the tragic events she is uncovering begin to affect her relationship with her husband, and her attitude to life. This is a story about issues of responsibility and guilt, and how these continue to blight – or transform positively – people’s lives into future generations. It also raises the question which polarises people: is it better to draw a line on the past and move on or can one only be whole when one has confronted traumatic events, even if the price is that one is permanently changed as a result?

I found this book a compulsive page-turner, and think it vital reading for young people or anyone who has never thought seriously about the holocaust. Whilst accepting that some may feel that too much has been written on the subject, this book covers a different aspect from usual – the guilt of those other than Germans under direct Nazi influence.

I understand the views of those who think that “making the story even more ghastly than it need have been” is distasteful, and that the romantic aspects of the modern story are a bit trite and sentimentalised. I do not find Julia’s husband Bertrand a totally convincing character, and Julia herself seems at times a bit over-emotional, self-absorbed and even selfishly thoughtless in the way she acts impulsively, keeping and breaking confidences on a whim -although all this is of course necessary to the story.

Although I cannot reveal the end, I thought on reflection that it was ironically the only logical one, rounding it off quite effectively. I read this in French, so cannot say how it would strike me in English. However, to the extent that I had such a strong urge to complete it, was moved by the plot, and will certainly remember it indefinitely, I cannot give it less than 4 stars

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Nemesis by Philip Roth.

In my first experience of a Roth novel, I was hooked from the first page by the flow of crystal-clear prose, so unlike the muddy rivers I have been wading through recently. Despite the unappealing theme of a polio epidemic in US Newark during World War 2, and the certainty that the tale would end in tragedy, I was compelled to read to the end.

The plot is perhaps too slight for the length of the book (280 pages) and you may feel that points are rammed home long after the reader has “got the point”. There is also the somewhat awkward device of introducing one of the young polio victims in passing as “I”, only for him to reappear in the last chapter, and listen to Bucky Cantor’s story in enough detail to be able to relate the whole tale of the promising young athlete from “the wrong side of town” who becomes a PE teacher with an overdeveloped sense of duty and “honour”. This has been stimulated by the strict upbringing received from his grandfather, and the need to expiate the failings of his father, an embezzler who abandoned his family. Bucky is haunted by the fact that his friends are dying in active service from which poor eyesight has debarred him and feels unduly responsible when the young boys in his charge begin to die with alarming speed from polio.

The strength of the story lies partly in the analysis of the factors which may form an individual personality, and the minute exploration of human emotions – the grief over the loss of a young life with great potential, the overwhelming desire to escape from a dreadful situation, with the accompanying guilt one may feel over so doing – also the corrosive effects of an inability to compromise when things go wrong. Then there are the interesting historical and cultural facets. Now that we take polio vaccine for granted, it is salutary to be reminded of what it must have been like, having to endure the fear of catching the disease every summer, not knowing where or how it would strike, or how it could be avoided. We are reminded of the gulf between the experiences of the comfortably off and the underprivileged, together with the rampant anti-Jewish prejudice in 1940s America. Also, there is the whole issue of religion: if you accept without question the existence of God, how can such a deity permit the random suffering of a polio epidemic, or the pointless slaughter of a world war?

This is a bleak novel, but in writing so unflinchingly about how chance affects our lives, for good or ill, and in reaching a conclusion which can be seen in some unexpected way as positive, I think it helps us to accept our own realities.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars