This is my review of South Riding (Virago Modern Classics) by Winifred Holtby.

Feckless blacksmith's daughter made good, Sarah Burton returns as a headmistress to the coastal Yorkshire of her youth, resolved to inspire her girls to "Take what you want" and to "Question everything". It is a time of change, with the old social order of rural life breaking down and a growing division between town and country. The depression of the 1930s is combining with the aftermath of the First World War and hints of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini to destabilise the world in the next major conflict.

Sarah's progressive ideas and desire for modern, well-equipped school buildings are at odds with the values of the traditional, stubborn yet honourable and charismatic local landowner Robert Calne. Yet this proves to be much more than a sentimental romance or soap opera, rather the moving and in-depth portrayal of a community which Winifred Holtby understood partly through growing up as a Yorkshire farmer's daughter but also through her mother's accounts of working as the first woman councillor for the East Riding, embellished by her unwise habit of leaving council meeting minutes screwed up in her waste-paper bin. The resultant storyline of corruption and speculation over land deals, the achievement of the desirable "ends" of building decent council housing by questionable means, so alarmed Winifred's mother that she obstructed publication of "South Riding" until after her daughter's untimely death.

The author's knowledge of her own imminent death gives "South Riding" an edge. She does not flinch from "killing off" characters and revealing the hardship in a world that predates the NHS, social work safety net and compulsory secondary education for girls under sixteen. Yet the book is saved from mawkish sorrow by the lively dialogues, striking descriptions, wry humour and realism of the narrative, with wonderful anecdotes from some of the characters.

At over five hundred pages, it may seem rather long, but the plus side is that the reader can become immersed in the characters' lives. This deserves to be called a "classic" with its hints of Thomas Hardy's Wessex, "Under Milkwood", George Eliot's "Middlemarch" and Arnold Bennett's "Five Towns", with the drama switched to the East Yorkshire wolds, crumbling cliffs, dramatic sunsets and constant presence of the sea. The story is all the more powerful and authentic for having been written during the period to which it relates. Winifred Holtby shows great prescience in sensing "the way things were going" and some issues, such as recession, the venality and self-interest of politicians, the uncertainty of life and the "sturdy endurance in obscurity" of ordinary people still resonate today.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of I Saw A Man by Owen Sheers.

Having recently moved to a road overlooking Hampstead Heath, Michael calls on his neighbour Josh to reclaim a tool he has lent him. Surprised to find that the house is empty but the back door left ajar, he enters it on an impulse. This small, chance act triggers an unpredictable but initially devastating chain of events with life-changing consequences.

The cleverly titled, "I saw a man", although it takes a while to understand the significance of this, is a slow-paced psychological thriller by a serious-minded writer interested in exploring the role of cause and effect in our lives, the strength of the will to survive, and how we handle guilt. From the outset, there is a sense of tension and of the need to take note of every mundane detail because it might prove important. Suspense is heightened by the device of switching in alternate chapters between Michael, an intruder in his friends' house, and flashbacks to explain his past life: a few minutes spent in the house therefore expand to an eternity.

What could be a taut structure is slackened by the author's desire to weave in his views on a variety of issues such as the recent banking crisis, the Iraq War and creative writing, including the idea that it is a manipulative process: observing others, "blending in" to gain confidences and exploiting friendships in order use people as models for the putty to be moulded into novels.

In the first chapter I was struck by the occasional poetic phrase – the "nun's head" of a mother coot – in the otherwise plain prose, which led me to discover that the author is also a poet. The narrative is very strong on descriptive detail, as if the work of a scriptwriter, causing me to wonder if Owen Sheers had a film in mind from the outset. There are some powerful passages, but the style often jarred on me. The frequent use of reported events makes for too much "condensed telling". Some metaphors seem inapt, words misused, although this may be intentional, all these factors combining to seem surprising from a Professor of Creative Writing.

I think this book will be popular, and could be adapted as an entertaining TV series or film. It is a page-turner, but marred for me by avoidable lapses into clunky prose and some plot digressions which either detract from the narrative drive, because they lead nowhere, or which seem like missed opportunities for further plot twists, such as the aftermath of Michael's liaison with the young New York hoodlums, Nico and Raoul.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín.

This is the detailed and dispassionate portrait of Nora Webster, widowed suddenly in her forties with two young sons to bring up, plus two older daughters who still need a mother’s support although they are living away from home at school or university. The story is set in close-knit, convention-bound, small-town coastal Ireland around 1970 where sexual equality was an alien concept, and the troubles brewing over the border in Belfast cast gathering background shadows. An intelligent woman who was prevented by her father’s early death from obtaining the college education of which she is capable, Norma is on the surface a dutiful wife and mother, unaccustomed to pleasing herself, but she is capable of sudden decisions which may seem out of character or even a little extreme, perhaps a result of the shock of grief.

Tóibín’s plain prose creates scenes and inner thoughts of acute realism which are saved from tedium for me – if not for many other readers – by his skill in the gradual revelation of details. What caused the death of Nora’s husband Maurice? What did he do for a living? How will Nora manage for money? How will she cope with a tyrannical office manager who bears a long-held grudge against her? Why does her son Donal begin to behave “out of character” at school? We see how, although superficially “carrying on as usual” all her four children have been affected by their father’s death in different ways. Nora herself, although for the most part continuing to fulfil her duties as a parent, and trying to build a new work and social life, often feels that the world around her is unreal, nothing has any meaning and she is adrift, only at ease when avoiding other in the refuge of her own house, or in sleep.

Throughout the book, Tóibín continually primes what seems like the trigger for some dramatic event, only for the tension to drift away, as is often the case in daily life. This may prove disappointing until one accepts that this novel is largely a study of grief, it would seem inspired by the author’s own experience of losing his father at an early age. It is also a detailed portrayal of the dynamics and relationships of family life, in which Nora seems always to have been an outsider, her natural self-containment now sharpened by the pain of her loss, although at times she displays great empathy, insight and sardonic humour. Another intriguing aspect is the power of the local gossip grapevine which sometimes reaches the level of farce. Everyone knows Nora’s business, or some distorted version of it, culminating in an interfering, it would seem at times telepathic, local nun: it occurred to Norma “that in any other century, Sister Thomas would have been burned as a witch”.

Hearing the author give a talk on this book also made me appreciate how much of his work is based on the part of Ireland (round Enniscorthy) where he grew up, a result of his belief that one can only write with authenticity about what one knows, and his fascination with places which people who have never met may experience differently but which all recognise, even long after they have changed.

This is not a depressing book, for it reinforces the essential truth that “time eases pain” although it may not really “heal” , and “life goes on”.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of To the Lighthouse (Wordsworth Classics) by Virginia Woolf.

Rereading this novel after many years, I have grasped for the first time the brilliance of Virginia Woolf’s work. One of the pioneers of “stream of consciousness” writing in the 1920s, she conveys various characters “interior monologues” with great technical skill and poetic beauty streaked with acerbic wit, weaving together the rapid fleeting impressions of their surroundings, appreciation of objects, fragments of memories, shifting perceptions of other people, the tendency to think one thing but say something else. For this reason, a novel which might seem dated retains relevance and the power to move us almost a century later. It reveals in an original way aspects of the relations between men and women, even the meaning of life.

The plot which could be written on the back of a postcard is immaterial, except that the narrative covering two separate days set ten years apart is cut in two by the impact of the First World War, subtly conveyed by the decay of a house on the Isle of Skye, left unvisited for several summers by the Ramsays. They are a cultured Edwardian family, casually taking for granted their privileged place in the world and unaware of how much things are about to change. There are clear autobiographical elements in the story – certainly, the author’s sister Vanessa thought that Mrs Ramsay bore an uncanny resemblance to their mother. Still beautiful despite being fifty and the mother of eight, Mrs Ramsay exhausts herself in supervising the servants who do the actual hard labour, in ensuring the comfort of her guests, perhaps with a little match-making thrown in, but most of all in trying always partly in vain to meet the demands of her egotistical, insecure philosopher husband, who continually seeks attention and reassurance that, having reached “Q” he may attain “R” – “What is R?” – and that his work may be remembered. Although also at times troubled by a sense of unfulfilled potential, “But what have I done with my life?”, Mrs Ramsay seems to enjoy her lynchpin role, in which she is both admired and resented by others.

A constant factor is the lighthouse (inspired by Godrevy Lighthouse near Talland House in St. Ives, rented by the author’s father for his family) which casts its regular, impersonal beam over the bedrooms at night. James Ramsay will probably always remember the disappointment of being unable to visit the lighthouse as a six-year-old when his father’s dismissive “It will not be fine” harshly shattered the dreams which his gentle mother had encouraged. Ironically forced by his father to sail to the lighthouse a decade later, the journey has a very different significance.

The narrative flows in a twisted thread which requires total concentration. This is the kind of book to reread for the sheer quality of the prose, and to note how the author moulds language to fit moods and impressions, rather as an artist uses paint – one of the characters being Lily Briscoe who agonises over her pictures much as Virginia Woolf must have done, perhaps also over the written word.

How much more might Virginia Woolf have achieved if manic-depression had not caused her to take her own life at the age of 59? Yet, had they been available, modern medications could have dulled the capacity to achieve her unique streams of consciousness.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson.

Reminiscent at times of "The Quiet American", "Catch-22", or "Life and Fate", but hard to pin down, by turns brilliant and flawed, it is easy to understand both how this sprawling and vastly ambitious epic won The National Book Award, and why some critics and general readers have slated it.

"The Colonel knew how to lead but he couldn't follow…. Won over by the power of myth, he became one himself. He stood out grandly ……against the background of his own imaginings." A central figure is Colonel Francis Sands, maverick CIA officer whose panache enables him to get away for years with his unofficial activities, such as the possibly hypothetical exercise in "Psy Ops" (psychological operations), biblically entitled, "The Tree of Smoke". His fatherless nephew "Skip" hero-worships him, accepts without question his uncle's mission to eradicate communism in the Far East, and is desperate to work as a linguist for intelligence operations in 1960s Vietnam. Frustrated by the ludicrous, tedious tasks he has been allocated, shocked into hysterical laughter when faced with a casual atrocity, will Skip eventually grasp the truth about the Colonel and the war and how will he live out the rest of his days?

A parallel thread is provided by the Houston brothers, in particular James, who enlist in the military for excitement or money, and provide the poor white cannon fodder on which the US depends.

Those old enough to remember the Vietnam War, who were stunned by the spate of epic films including "The Deer Hunter", "Apocalypse Now", "Platoon" and "Good Morning Vietnam" may wonder if this rambling novel, not published until 2007, can have anything to add. Many (including me) will find the book hard to follow for Denis Johnson makes no concessions: he expects us to battle with American slang, military acronyms, a grasp of the stages of the war and general knowledge which extends to the history of the search for a yellow fever vaccine in Cuba. The novel is essentially a series of disjointed episodes requiring us to work out what is going on as well as what has happened between the scenes. All this lack of clarity seems to be part of Johnson's intention to convey a sense of the confusion bordering on lunacy that was part of the experience of being plunged into an alien eastern culture corrupted by western influence.

The author's freewheeling approach creates an uneven coverage. For instance, it is made tragically clear what has shaped the Houston brothers but James's descent into traumatised violence in Vietnam is too condensed. The surprising change in Skip Sands' life revealed towards the end is glossed over in comparison to the detailed portrayal of his character and life in much of the novel. Storm's at times surreal trek to find the man he believes to be still alive is described in great detail, but his role as the Colonel's side-kick remains sketchy to the end. Too many passages or dialogues read like notes for a novel, rather than the work itself.

On the other hand, with his capacity for striking, often poetic prose, Johnson is skilful in creating characters when he feels like it, together with a vivid sense of place. The strong play-like dialogues are suffused with the author's quirky humour which also alleviates the book's inevitable bleakness. One is held by a sense of anticipation, for at any moment a mundane scene may be transformed by farce, beauty, a danger averted or an act of brutality, as is the case in war. My main criticisms are that the book never quite delivers what it promises, it seems to lose its way in a disappointing ending, and is too long, by perhaps two hundred pages. Yet, it stays in one's mind and provokes thought and discussion.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Dreams of My Russian Summers: A Novel by Andreï Makine.

Admiration for Makine's short novel "La Musique d'un vie" in English translation inspired me to embark on the much longer multiple prize-winning "Testament français" in French. I hope that this review of the original French novel may hold some points of interest for those reading the English translation.

It describes a sensitive Russian boy who spends summers in Siberia with the half-French grandmother Charlotte who regales him with anecdotes of Paris in the years leading up to the First World War. She backs them up with memorabilia from a battered trunk which hold the allure of an Aladdin's Cave for the boy. Unsurprisingly, he grows up with a sense of being split between two cultures, the harsh "reality" of Communist Russia holding less appeal than nostalgic memories of a past France. As a teenager, tired of his peers' mockery of his eccentricity, the boy makes a brief effort to break free from Charlotte's influence, but comes to realise how much he values it. It is a moot point to what extent Charlotte is responsible for nourishing his artistic sense as a writer, or aggravating a degree of mental imbalance.

This novel has a clearly autobiographical basis: following the disappearance of Russian parents, presumed to have been deported, Makine was brought up in Siberia by his half-French grandmother, who filled him with the language and culture of France absorbed from her childhood visits to Paris. After seeking asylum in Paris in his thirties and living on the breadline as a struggling writer, Makine resorted to the pretence that his early novels had been translated from Russian, since publishers would not believe that he could have written with such fluency and feeling in French.

A great admirer of Proust, Makine has imitated his style in "Testament français", which is short on plot, more a series of impressions, feelings and incidents. Particularly in the early chapters, I found the prose pretentious, with a cloying sentimentality. It was hard to believe that a boy of nine or so would be so enthralled by state dinners to welcome the Tsar and his wife to Paris in the 1890s, events about which Charlotte herself must have learned second-hand. And would the boy really have been so entranced by the sycophantic verse of José Maria de Heredia of which eight stanzas are included in the text? I was by turns irritated and bored by the repetition and exaggeration of ordinary images – a faded photo on the back of a newspaper cutting from the early 1900s of three demure young ladies in dark discreet dresses, over which the now teenage boy almost faints with emotion from the experience of mentally insinuating himself into their world, captured by click of the camera's shutter.

The writing seems most real to me when the narrator focuses on his own direct experience without any attempt at imitative artifice. For instance, there is a striking description of a sudden but fleeting storm bursting over the Russian steppe, to be replaced quickly by calm sunshine. He is probably very accurate in describing male obsession with female physical sexuality, although in the process the narrator appears very male chauvinist, to add to his intense self-absorption. The passages describing the sense of wanting to be both Russian and French are often quite powerful, and there are flashes of wry humour and insight. Although most characters apart from Charlotte and the narrator are thinly drawn, there are some vivid portraits, as of his tough, coarse, pragmatic aunt, a typical product and survivor of the Stalin era, unchanged even twenty years after the dictator's death.

Makine is a talented writer, and I shall probably read more of his work, but found this one too much of a chore. There is an English translation entitled "Dreams of my Russian Summers" which loses the point of the original title as revealed at the end.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín.

In this novella, Mary the mother of Jesus – although he is never referred to by name – recalls aspects of her son's life, the preaching, miracles and his crucifixion. Her take on events is original, and may offend some believers. It does not trouble me that Tóibín may have altered the order of events and inserted some "inaccuracies" in what is anyway a controversial reality.

According to Mary, the disciples were misfits and her son used his talents to lead them into trouble. She implies that he raised Lazarus from the dead with reluctance, as if he knew it to be a misuse of his powers. Certainly, Lazarus's sister Martha was "afraid that what she had asked for was being granted" and it is clear that Lazarus is unnerved and bewildered by his experience of death, and no one feels at ease with him afterwards, wanting but not daring to ask questions.

Mary perceives her son's talk in public as "high flown" and "riddles, using strange proud terms to describe himself and his task in the world", a kind of manic grandiosity when he describes himself as the Son of God.

Mary describes how, to her abiding shame, she ran from the scene of the crucifixion before her son was dead, to avoid the risk of being captured herself. Afterwards, she is dogged by earnest men, I assume the gospel writers, who wish to extract every word of her first hand testament for posterity. One of them is delighted by her dream of seeing her son raised from the dead, which implies that her memories will be twisted to suit the facts of a new religion, or discarded if they do not fit. Hiding in Ephesus from the authorities who killed her son, Mary is drawn to the goddess Artemis who gives her a sense of release. When her minders assure her that her son has redeemed the world through his death she responds that "It was not worth it".

The prose style is striking, eloquent, often poetical – not the first person "voice" of a simple, illiterate woman living in the middle east two thousand years ago, but rather that of the writer. This had the effect of distancing me somewhat from Mary's grief, although I found the work gripping. It seemed to lose its way a little after the crucifixion, but comes to a clear conclusion.

In my attempt to confirm what the Irish Catholic, at least by upbringing, author meant to convey, I discovered that this book was first produced as a stage monologue, in the Broadway production of which, "Mary is seen smoking what appear to be joints of marijuana and swigging from a commercially labelled liquor bottle". This concerns me as so much of the strength of the piece seems to lie in the quality of prose writing to be read and reflected upon individually, rather than declaimed with dramatic effects. I appreciate that the lyrical style lends itself to being spoken aloud, which may appeal more to some people.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge.

The fact that the author, like his "anti-hero" Alexander, left Berlin just before the fall of the Wall, gives an authentic ring to this saga of four generations of a family living in East Germany under Communism and later unification. The chapters switch back and forth, adopting different viewpoints between 1952 and 2001. This allows us to see the characters' estimation of each other, and adds the intriguing spice of knowing how their lives will turn out, but not yet how or why.

Each chapter is like a short story – for me, the most perceptive and entertaining were the accounts of self-absorbed and semi-senile former Communist party activist Wilhelm's ninetieth birthday. He cold shoulders a couple whose son has defected to the West, unaware that his grandson has just done the same. In the eyes of his great-grandson Markus, whose desire to be an animal keeper is fated to remain unachieved, Wilhelm resembles a sharply observed pterodactyl, who on a generous impulse gives him his stuffed iguana.

Although I was fascinated by the theme and wanted to admire this book, it proved hard going. Perhaps owing to the translation, the style often seems leaden. Scenes are continually overloaded with mundane, wordy descriptions, which is doubly irritating since some of the major incidents are never fully explained. There is a tendency to recall events rather than enact them, although the shifting timeframe would readily permit this more dramatic approach. So, it is merely conveyed in the odd paragraph how Kurt ruined his own health and inadvertently brought about his brother Werner's death by sending him a mildly subversive letter which landed them both in a Soviet camp. Any sense of guilt that Kurt may feel, the traumatic effect on his mother Irina, are never explored in any depth.

I looked mostly in vain for the sense of menace combined with crass futility of life under the Stasi that one finds in, for example, the superb film, "The lives of others". The most sinister scene for me is when, returning to Berlin after a period of exile in Mexico, Charlotte becomes convinced that the plum job which has lured her back is a trick. The smoker in a dark leather coat who keeps directing probing glances her way is the first of several who will eventually lead her and Wilhelm into custody, signed confessions and ultimate disappearance. "Where were the people whose names are never mentioned anymore? Who not only didn't exist but had never existed?" Yet, when we next meet them, Charlotte and Wilhelm are comfortably employed in their promised posts, in a world of servants, string-pulling and relative luxury.

For me, a real sense of the grimness of East Germany rarely comes through, as in the powerful scene in which Kurt pursues his rebellious son Alexander through the rundown streets in the vain search for a restaurant that will serve a decent meal. "A subway train rattled by – but the subway trains here ran on an overhead line, while the suburban trains ran underground. The world turned upside down …….. passengers like cardboard cut-outs descending into hell."

A potentially brilliant novel which for me does not quite come off.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut.

E.M.Forster, known as Morgan, hates the stuffy conventions and snobbish prejudices of middle-class Edwardian society, yet is unable to break away from living with his mother who reaches the ripe old age of ninety. He recognises his sexuality, but for years is only able to express it abroad, in Egypt or India, by forming risky unequal relationships with young men from the other side of the race and class divides. In similar vein to Colm Tóibín's novel, "The Master", based on Henry James, Damon Galgut has chosen to fictionalise Forster's life rather than produce a biography, no doubt because this gives free rein for his creative imagination to get inside the author's head and embroider facts to suit his interpretation. He is at liberty to pick and choose what he wishes to include and emphasise.

Although I often found Morgan's furtive fumblings quite tedious, it is undeniable that Galgut's subtle prose has the power to enable heterosexual readers to understand the complex, shifting feelings of a sensitive and introspective gay man seeking fulfilment at a time when this was against the law, or the topic of mocking gossip. In one telling scene, an English official in Egypt is prepared to help get one of Morgan's young native friends out of a scrape, but is desperate to counsel him against the liaison, without ever managing to overcome his reticence to speak plainly. "Tall and dry, composed of jointed segments like a large, untidy bird, Robin seemed always uncomfortable, but more than usually so at this moment".

The title "Arctic Summer", re-using that of a novel which Forster was unable to complete, conveys the concept of being "blocked" in two senses – as a writer, and a man. In the kind of profound insight in which Damon Galgut excels, it is only in the final pages that he uses the term "Arctic summer" to describe how Morgan catches sight of himself in a café mirror, in which the angle of the light makes him seem to "stand alone in the middle of an immense whiteness – nothing moving, nothing alive". This coincides with his pain at overhearing the gossip of two strangers who have recognised him as a famous author, "He's a timid soul. They say he hasn't really lived at all, except in his mind."

Another important thread is the often painful process of writing, in particular Morgan's struggle to complete what came to be regarded as his masterpiece, "A Passage to India". Inspired by his first visit to that land, he knows that he must write about it, but for years cannot see how to bring it to fruition. Impressed by the "spiritual hostility" of the Kailasa cave, he is convinced he has found what he has been searching for, "a terrible incident, a crime of some kind. But when he tried to focus on what it was, it became unclear, all of it retreated from him".

Galgut also conveys the strong sense of place that makes Morgan a successful travel writer: walking back from an evening with a poet who has described the history of Alexandria, Morgan realises for the first time how old the city is although there is little trace of its history beneath the "ordinary and banal" modern buildings – this highlights, of course, the tragedy of the recent loss of ancient buildings and carvings in countries like Syria.

My only criticism of the book is that some of characters, like Morgan's English male friends, seem undeveloped and two-dimensional, but this may be intentional to show how little they really impinge on Forster's introspective world – plus they all seem to let him down by getting married as a way out of their dilemma.

With his well-crafted, expressive prose, full of insight, flashes of humour (I enjoyed the one-sided row with the combative D.H. Lawrence) and poignancy, Damon Galgut is an unusual writer who deserves to be more widely read and praised.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars