This is my review of The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes.

This short novel often reads like a biography but consists in fact of fictionalised reflections on the life of the famous Russian composer Shostakovich. The author’s cool, elegant style and rather contrived structure – three sections, like a musical triad, each covering a leap year at twelve year intervals marking some significant event in the composer’s life – tend to distance us somewhat from the main characters. Although Julian Barnes never lets his punctuation slip, the lack of any clear plot and the tendency for paragraphs to flit back and forth in topic and time create a kind of fragmented “stream of consciousness” effect which at first I found quite unengaging, even dull.

The essence of this book, which also turns out to be the best part of it, is the portrayal of what it is like to live in a society where artistic creativity and freedom of expression are censored, so that it is not enough to keep quiet, one has actively to follow the accepted line, but the goal posts keep moving so half the battle is working out what is expected.

In the first part, the innately neurotic but understandably terrified Shostakovich has inadvertently fallen foul of Stalin in 1936 by producing an opera which, as a sycophantic “Pravda” journalist asserts “had only succeeded outside the Soviet Union because it was ‘decadent and …tickled the perverted taste of the bourgeois with its quacks, grunts and growls… and its convulsive and spasmodic nature derived from jazz' ”. So, every night, standing fully dressed with his suitcase by the lift on the landing outside his apartment, the composer awaits the inevitable visit of the secret police.

1948 finds Shostakovich on a plane flying back from New York crushed by the humiliation of being forced to read an official speech extolling the Soviet music system as “superior to any other on the face of the earth” and condemning musicians who persisted in their "belief in the doctrine of art for art’s sake" with particular venom reserved for the "perverted" Stravinsky, who had claimed asylum in the United States. But what mortifies Shostakovich even more is the “suave offensiveness” of the Russian defector to the CIA who grills him without mercy, forcing him to confirm that he “personally subscribes” to every one of the bigoted assertions he has made. Julian Barnes employs the vivid image of a parrot banging its head on every step as it is dragged downstairs by a cat to show how even a famous composer cannot risk expressing his true opinions.

By 1960, Shostakovich is drowning his guilt in the vodka for which he has developed a head, to mask his guilt over having taken the final step of agreeing to join the Communist Party. It is ironical that, at a time when the worst of the terrors seem a thing of the past with the death of Stalin, the composer gives in to constant badgering thus laying himself open to the charge of being Krushchev’s stooge.

This novel is an acquired taste, perhaps including a liking for classical music and some knowledge of recent Russian history, but repays rereading and contains some interesting ideas. I assumed the “Noise of Time” was unmusical cacophony of any discordant age, but it is in fact culled from a book of the same name by the Russian poet. Osip Mandel'shtam.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Blow Your House Down (Virago Modern Classics) by Pat Barker.

Set in a rundown northern town, this short but dense, bleak yet gripping novel exposes the lives of a disparate group of working class prostitutes trying to contain their rising fear over the mounting evidence of a serial killer, unprotected by the police who seem to using them as bait to trap him. Understandably haunted by the murder of her female lover, one of the women decides to take control and avenge her death, but can she be sure she has found the right man? Each of Pat Barker’s novels seems to be triggered by specific real events, in this case the activities of the “Yorkshire Ripper”.

Her second novel, published in 1984 long before she hit the Booker jackpot, this is very different from her recent work, revealing the style of her early writing from which a more fragmented, stream of consciousness, perhaps more self-conscious and studied, sophisticated style has developed. Parts 1 and 2 in particular seem more straightforward than later work, with strong dialogue and clear narrative drive making the novel a page-turner. Without undue sentimentality, Pat Barker arouses our sympathy for the women who have often had a raw deal and support each other with earthy and stoical humour. You may of course feel that, along with the stereotyping, she tends to let them off too lightly as unfortunate victims in comparison with the men, all of whom appear to some degree weak, pathetic or abusive. Along with some disturbing graphic descriptions of violence, there is the unsettling image of the headless chickens on a conveyor belt, their feathers stained with blood as an analogy for the victimised prostitutes.

Although Pat Barker’s talent as a wordsmith is evident, her plot potentially powerful, I found the arguably original and daring change in point of view in Part 4 too abrupt and confusing, destroying the flow and tension built up previously. Feeling that I had been catapulted into another novel, I had to search back to see if any of what seemed like a new set of characters had appeared before. I think the author is trying to show that how “respectable” women who suffer attack are treated better than prostitutes but think that this thread needed to be woven in more skilfully from the outset rather than bolted on as an awkward coda.

This novel confirms my impression that Pat Barker is a distinctive and thoughtful writer, who does not flinch from the challenge of describing horrific events which neither she nor most of her readers have experienced, who switches perhaps too swiftly from well-observed social chat to the macabre, and whose talents lie in striking description and dialogue rather than constructing a plot.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Noonday by Pat Barker.

Noonday is the third part of a trilogy based on the triangular relationship between three artists, whose lives are defined by World War 1 in their youth, and World War 2 in late middle age. This is Pat Barker’s second trilogy about war, which obviously fascinates her in both its arbitrary physical violence and more complex psychological effects on both soldiers and civilians. The prickly Elinor Brooke, perhaps not as independent as she seems, the talented, rambunctious but inwardly insecure Kit Neville, and introverted, somewhat enigmatic and troubled Paul seem to have become real and familiar people for her, providing endless scope to explore their thoughts and motivations.

This is not a stand-alone book, in that I think it is essential to have read the second novel “Toby’s Room” (and ideally Life Class as well) to know the circumstances of the death of Elinor’s brother Toby at the front, and Kit’s part in it. I realised when reading “Toby’s Room” that plot has become unimportant to Pat Barker over the years. I sympathise with readers who found the early chapters of “Noonday” a struggle, since they often seemed like padding or fillers to reach the next incident or situation of interest to her. A few points caught my attention: the sense of menace combined with unreality created by the German bomber planes “circling like gnats” over a Home Counties garden; the long shadow cast by the death of the mythically heroic Toby, to the extent that his grief-stricken mother finds a reluctant substitute for him in her grandson Alex, who has the misfortune of looking very like him.

Otherwise, I felt quite unengaged in disjointed events which may be realistic but do not feed any narrative drive – the slow death of the mother with whom Elinor never shared any mutual love or understanding, Paul’s obsessive flashback’s to his own mother’s sickness and death, the daily grind of Paul and Elinor’s lives in London as respectively an air-raid warden and an ambulance driver. It’s all fairly bleak but preferable to the implausible appearance of a medium who is clearly a fraud, yet it would seem haunted by a ghost from the trenches. As Paul paced the dark London streets rather than take refuge in a shelter “he found it easy to believe they were leading him to a secret chamber, right at the heart of the blacked-out city, where a white, bloated figure sat enthroned, a grotesque Persephone, claiming to speak for millions of the mouthless dead.”

I fear that the ludicrous Bertha Mason (shades of Jane Eyre) caused me to skip in despair, until I found Chapter 23, which is where Pat Barker reaches the culminating stage of the trilogy, the unresolved tension of Kit Neville’s unrequited love for Elinor, his subconscious hatred of Paul as a rival – in love and art, a powder key which can be sparked by the device of Paul’s betrayal of Elinor in the odd, disrupted limbo of London in the blitz, where “living outside time”, the old rules do not apply. At last, in the final hundred or so pages, I found the chain of dramatic events, ironic twists, expression of real emotion at last and strong dialogue I had been missing.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of Toby’s Room by Pat Barker.

Although Toby’s Room may be read as a “stand-alone” novel, it is part of a trilogy best read in order, starting with “Life Class” which is based on real-life young artists studying at the Slade under the fearsome Professor Tonks just before the outbreak of World War One.

Pat Barker’s books seem to be triggered by specific real people and actual events, in this case the death of Virginia Woolf’s brother Thoby, prompting her novel “Jacob’s Room” and also by the death of Edward Brittain, brother of Vera, who is believed to have committed suicide by way of putting himself in danger at the Front, rather than face the disgrace of court-martial and prison.

A central character is the prickly and unconventional art student Elinor Brooke, who is faced with the disturbing realisation that her deep bond with her brother Toby is too close. Before there is time to resolve this issue, she learns that he is missing, presumed dead in the war. Knowing that brilliant but boorish artist Kit Neville was serving in Toby’s company so is most likely to know the truth about what occurred, she enlists the aid of Paul Tarrant, another artist and former lover, to extract the information from the reluctant Kit, even though he is undergoing painful surgery to restore his damaged nose.

This is a cue for the author to explore another aspect of wartime social history, the involvement of Tonks in recording the hideous wounds caused by shells and the development of plastic surgery. I had no idea that injured soldiers undergoing nose surgery had to endure temporary tubes called “pedicles”, sometimes as many as three, making them resemble squids (a sick joke on Kit’s part?) nor that anaesthesia was so rudimentary that the tube carrying the gas often got in the surgeon’s way, with the danger of making the operating staff themselves woozy if it was removed without due care.

Barker’s vivid prose, punctuated with original metaphors often veers into poetry as she describes Zeppelins over Hampstead Heath and coastal cottages at the mercy of tides and shingle in a storm. There are some strong scenes with lively dialogues, mostly involving Kit who is one of the most flesh-and-blood, fully developed characters: Kit wearing a Rupert Brooke mask on an outing to the Café Royal with Paul; Kit remembering his fraught relationship with medical officer Toby forcing him to take ludicrous risks to retrieve not only wounded men but corpses from no man’s land; Kit finally describing Toby’s last days to Paul, but these powerful passages which prove Pat Barker’s talent are too few.

I wanted to admire this novel, but it was often too disjointed and lacking in focus to engage me. I could not understand why the author tells us in detail about Elinor’s dissection of a corpse (to learn more about anatomy for artistic reasons), but avoids describing Kit’s wound and how their first sight of it affected Paul and Elinor. Why does Pat Barker include extracts of Elinor’s very contrived diaries, casually name-dropping visits to Virginia Woolf and Lady Ottoline Morrell without ever explaining her connection with them? Why is Toby so underdeveloped as a character? If he and Elinor are so close, why do they have such limited communication? Why are the most dramatic moments so often reported third hand after the event?

It could be that the author is deliberately disjointed and unfocused, because that is how real life often is, and she wants us to interpret the story for ourselves, but I think the book is weakened by the lack of a well-constructed plot and three-dimensional characters.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.

Rachel’s morning commuter train often stops at a red signal near Euston, enabling her to fantasise over an attractive couple who live in a house backing onto the railway line. Its layout is familiar to Rachel, since she recently lived a few doors away from it in the house still occupied by ex-husband Tom, now with his new wife Anna and baby daughter. Her grief over this is driving Rachel into the downward spiral of an erratic, embarrassing alcoholic but when exactly did she begin to drink too much and why?

This is the starting point of a twisty psychological thriller which relies heavily on the way vital details are revealed. The viewpoint switches between Rachel and the object of her fantasy, Megan, at times also including Anna, to make a somewhat clunky dramatic triangle, as each recalls recent events in a kind of mental diary. It is often interesting to see how these different characters see the same events. Rachel’s personality is the most fully developed: probably an unreliable narrator, perhaps guilty of some dreadful act committed in a drunken haze, arousing contempt or frustrated pity mixed with despair in those who have to deal with her, she also evokes sympathy in the reader with her flashes of wry humour and self-knowledge. In contrast, Megan and Anna seem to speak with the same voice, shallow and unstable cyphers, in fact all the characters apart from Rachel tend to be portrayed as two-dimensional stereotypes. None of them is very likeable, although that does not bother me.

This book is not particularly well-written, it has clearly been over-hyped, a conscious attempt to recreate the success of “Gone Girl”. It is easy to guess the key to the mystery, and final chapters leading up to the climax seem more rushed and formulaic than the intriguing slow build of the first half. Although the highly visual descriptions pave the way for a film of the book, I shall not feel driven to watch it.

Despite this, the novel is definitely a page turner with a plot which is imaginative in detail if somewhat hackneyed in its main thrust. The ending was better than the let down I had expected. It fascinates me how brilliant, insightful wordsmiths are often hopeless at plots, or underestimate their importance, whereas those with a gift for constructing an intrigue cannot prevent themselves from slipping into banal, clichéd prose. The recent novels “I saw a man” and “Disclaimer” seem to me to achieve a stronger combination of good writing and intriguing plot.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Gaudy Night (A Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries) by Dorothy L Sayers.

Her celebrity as a writer of detective fiction gives Harriet Vane the confidence to visit 1930s Oxford for a “Gaudy Night” celebration for the first time since graduating from Shrewsbury College where she was so happy before the trauma of being falsely accused of poisoning her lover and saved from the gallows by the intervention of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. When the activities of a poison pen poltergeist begin to threaten the peace and the reputation of the College, Harriet is called back to investigate.

I found this novel entertaining although it proved as dated as I had feared, including in ways I had not expected. In terms of style, it often feels like a novel written a century earlier than it was.The frequent Latin quotations and Greek tags with no translations provided are particularly irritating, but perhaps an educated reader of the time would have had no trouble knowing what they meant. Alternatively, having been taught Latin since the age of six by her father, perhaps Dorothy Sayers overestimated the capacity of her readers, or with the dismissive arrogance often shown by Harriet maybe considered that if they could not understand it they could lump it. There is a similar kind of academic elitism in the often abstruse quotations from sixteenth century writers included at the start of most chapters. Yet the irony is that the female dons of Shrewsbury College frequently behave with the emotional immaturity of the pupils of Enid Blyton’s “Mallory Towers”.

As a detective mystery, the plot is rather thin. This is much more a psychological study of a group of women pursuing careers in a privileged cocoon, yet continually troubled by the sense that they are regarded as inferior to their male counterparts (in separate cocoons) and by doubts as to whether they have made the right choice. Should they have satisfied the desire for a man instead, even at the cost of having to further his career rather than their own, or of sacrificing self-fulfilment to putting their children first? Harriet naturally arouses resentment since she appears to “have it all”: a career in the big wide world, the option to become an academic, and a very wealthy suitor offering her future security for the taking.

For the most part Harriet and Lord Peter (Why does he have to be an aristocrat except to feed some fantasy of the author’s?) communicate for the most part through the exchange of literary quotations and witty ripostes. One of Harriet’s reasons for refusing his regular proposals of marriage seems to be that he makes her feel inferior. With justice, it would seem, in that she has to call him in to solve the crime, and even rewrites her novel to take account of his criticisms of her leading character Wilfred. There is also a double standard in the indulgent attitude to the idleness of Lord Peter’s student nephew, whereas Harriet rages against the “waste” of the place offered to an “ordinary” girl who has only come to Oxford to please her parents.

Many scenes make me uneasy in their elitism: Lord Peter calling a waiter continually to pick up the napkin which has slipped off Harriet’s silk skirt, or Harriet betting in a College sweepstake, not on a horse, but on the student most likely to win a prize.

Despite Dorothy Sayers apparently unconscious snobbery – a product of her times – she sometimes mocks the conventions: the male dons’ ludicrous popping formal shirt-fronts; the pleasure of “snuffing the faint, musty odour of slowly perishing leather” in the Bodleian Library; the possible futility of the complex mechanistic analysis of poetry.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of Three Men in a Boat & Three Men on a Bummel (Wordsworth Classics) by Jerome K. Jerome.

When I read this as quite a young child, it seemed hilarious. I’m referring, for instance, to George and Harris rushing round in search of the butter, until realising that one of them had sat in it. Struggling dutifully through it more recently for a book group, it seemed rather silly and very dated, although I could still laugh at the succession of locals claiming to have caught the ever weightier trout encased on a pub wall, only for it to turn out to be made of plaster, when one of the clumsy three accidentally knocked it down.

I found a bit of research on the story much more interesting. Publication in 1889 was earlier than I had imagined i.e. not Edwardian. After the passing of the 1870 Education Act, and the extension of cheap rail fares giving people ready access the Thames, there was a sharp increase in the demand for amusing, easily read books and in the appreciation of boating as a pastime. This was perhaps a comic novel ahead of its time, much Victorian reading matter still being a bit sententious and worthy. So, there was a sharp contrast between the popularity of the book (which has never been out of print), and the snooty response of critics, even in Punch.

The author himself came from a once prosperous middle-class family which had fallen on hard times. So, despite his grammar school education, he had to start work as a young teenager, which obviously gave him a wide experience of life and the ability to relate to ordinary people. His unusual name was partly due to his father Jerome Clapp adding another Jerome to make it sound more distinguished. The “Klapka” came from a Hungarian who lodged with the family for a while.

I can see that what is really a series of amusing anecdotes, observations on daily life and snippets of local history on the areas bordering the Thames is appealing to us now in its innocence and nostalgic portrayal of a lost age. This probably remains a classic which you should read, the younger the better, although I doubt if a tale of three gormless middle-aged men rowing up the Thames more than a century ago would appeal much to this audience.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

 

This is my review of The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma.

When, despite their mother’s pleas, their stern father accepts the transfer to a bank “a camel’s distance of more than a thousand kilometres away” in northern Nigeria, four brothers slide into mischief, playing as fishermen at a dangerous out-of-bounds river. The cursing of the eldest, Ikenna, by a local madman, triggers a chain reaction of family tragedy extending far beyond the expected fateful climax.

The novel is saved from total bleakness by touches of ironic humour and vivid insights into Nigerian small-town life – the superstition, tradition, squalor, corruption and lurking violence bizarrely mixed with possession of western consumer goods and evangelical Christianity – from an author who has experienced it first-hand in the very community of Akure where the tale is set.

My reaction to the original, quirky prose is ambivalent, since its raw power is (for me) continually sabotaged by the distracting effect of mangled metaphors and misused terms. Is this style intentional? Is it brilliantly creative? Does it too often become just plain irritating? I can’t decide.

To provide a few examples out of thousands:

“crumbs of information began to fall from Mother’s soliloquy like tots of feathers from a richly plumed bird”; “in the distance, a wild motoring road undulated on the swathe of dirt road”; “the din of an aircraft flying overhead mopped his voice into a desperate whimper” In a sprawling bazaar, “the procession had zipped through the thin path between boulders of humans, stalls and shops, their trucks plodding ponderously to attract the market people”; “a clear sky had bared its teeth”; at a grave, “with a bewildering air of apathy, the diggers dug on, quicker”; the udder of courage from which we’d drunk our fill had been drained, and was now shrunken like a crone’s breast. He spat and wiped it into the earth with his canvas shoe”.

The oddness of the style may chime with the viewpoint of the former nine-year old self of Benjamin, the narrator who is recalling events two decades later. It may also capture the idiom of a strong Nigerian oral tradition of storytelling, but it often reads like a children’s story with an inappropriately dark and gruesome content. The spate of extreme and over-the-top emotional outbursts tends to batter the reader into insensitivity, seeking relief by disengagement from what is in essence an unbearably moving tale of the hand of fate.

Since the book reached the Man-Booker shortlist, the bar of critical review is inevitably set fairly high. As I tend to regret the current strait-jacketed contrivances of creative writing, perhaps I should be more enthusiastic about Chigozie Obigoma’s untrammelled out-pouring from the heart. Perhaps I should compare his style to Van Gogh’s brilliantly coloured, distorted landscapes as opposed to the uptight purity of classical art. My reservations may be best understood by reference to the subtle, fluid eloquence of another Nigerian writer, the late Chine Achebe.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Dig by Cynan Jones.

Daniel, a decent, gentle young man with a deep love of the Welsh countryside where he grew up, is exhausted not only by the effort of running an isolated sheep farm, but also by his unsuccessful struggle to come to terms with a personal tragedy. “The big man” strikes fear in everyone he meets, prison being the only thing he dreads. His love is reserved for his dog Messie a vital assistant for his obsession with flushing out badgers for a sinister purpose which gradually becomes clear. The contrast between the two men is shown by their reactions to the digging up of the mysterious metal shard, which Daniel invests with mythical properties, “a piece of lightning solidified there”, whereas the big man values it only as a source of scrap. This short, intense novel seems to be working towards an unpredictable confrontation between these two men, the anticipation of which makes the book a page-turner, despite its slow pace, detailed descriptions and few events.

Yet I knew that it was vital to read slowly, to absorb every phrase, for what makes this book remarkable is the style which is like a sustained prose poem. There are striking images of fleeting thoughts, the weather, wildlife as well as darker scenes – perhaps sometimes unduly brutal or bleak – involving problems over the delivery of lambs, or the baiting of badgers.

Cynan Jones makes us think about the minute aspects of daily life: the shoes with the backs worn down because Daniel has never bothered to put them on properly which “ at first… looked comfortable and loved, but actually they had the unfulfilled imbalance of things which had not been used to their fullness”. Or the importance and complexity of sounds for Daniel in a quiet landscape: “how in this prehensile night there could come the illusion of the sea nearby….the wind coming over the trees then dropping through the hedges …… with the distant noise of waves breaking and running….such… that he could not be sure this wasn’t the sound of the shifting tides carried from the coast that was dropped away out of sight a few miles off.” Or simply: “It was brewing to rain again, the sky bruising up and coming in from the sea”.

Although less sensitive, the big man also knows the country well: at night, when he was up to no good, “it was a time of mixed certainty for him, with… people awake at night, but they were also busier and distracted and with that general busyness disregarded noises more readily, accepting them as the product of another’s work.”

Some sentences seem too contrived like “I’ll give it four hours, he thought, attritionally” but you could argue this is both original and an example of poetical experimentation which cannot “work” every time for all readers.

I would give this book five stars without reservation if were not for the ending, which is disappointing in seeming sketchy, underdeveloped and, as another reviewer has commented, too “rushed”. Yet, plot is clearly not the author’s main concern.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini.

On the eve of a fateful journey, impoverished villager Baba Ayub tells his children the story of the “div”, the demonic giant of Afghan folklore who requires a father to hand over one of his children: the man is understandably traumatised until he grasps that as a consequence his boy has gained a much better existence. In succeeding chapters, the “life” of the novel imitates the “art” of the folktale.

This novel is like a series of short stories spanning six decades from 1952, located in Afghanistan, France, the United States and Greece, switching between the viewpoints of a succession of sometimes tenuously related characters: Afghans driven from their land, those who have prospered from the war, expatriates who fallen in love with the country. Although it is often interesting to see different perspectives on the same events, the digressive approach, large number of characters and extraneous detail tend to weaken the power of the narrative drive. There are many poignant moments, but I often felt that the author is telling me what to think rather than letting me analyse people’s behaviour and feelings for myself. The “voices” used are often too much those of an educated, middle-aged man – the author – rather than the characters in question: the chauffeur-factotum Nabi and Gholam the dispossessed teenager brought up in a refugee camp, are cases in point. As a qualified doctor, Hosseini may be less disturbed by maladies than the average reader, but the high incidence of illness and premature death amongst the characters, not least those in more privileged positions, is unduly depressing, miseries laden upon the misfortunes of Afghanistan. The unrelenting blows which strike even the most fortunate are offset by passages of extreme sentimentality which grated on me.

After the huge success of his first novel “The Kite Runner” and the searing account of the plight of Afghan women in “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, Khaled Hosseini’s third novel “And the Mountains Echoed” cannot fail to be a bestseller, but I found it somewhat disappointing. With his role to promote humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan, the author is well-placed to record interviews with a wide range of real people with various types of involvement in this war-torn land, and I would have found an account of these more rewarding than this rambling and sometimes mawkish novel, although it is clearly to many readers taste in various cultures.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars