This is my review of Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.

In the parochial little British colony of mid-eighteenth century New York, no one knows what to make of the handsome young new arrival from London, Mr Richard Smith. Is he a provocative conman, or a well-intentioned blunderer? Should the wily merchant Lovell accept his bill of exchange demanding the vast and ruinous sum of a thousand pounds? When the gossip grapevine spreads the word of Smith’s wealth, everyone wants to curry his favour, but a twist of misfortune can quickly set the whole community against him

Francis Spufford has used his research skills as an established writer of non-fiction to recreate in his first novel the minute and vivid detail of a past age which seems to ring true even if it is fact an artful illusion. This is a modern take on a Henry Fielding, Tom Jones kind of fiction, a succession of quirky events, with a sometimes intrusive narrator, but free from the sententious, long-winded moralising of the classics. The author has even taken the bold risk of adopting an eighteenth century turn of phrase, and appears to carry it off. Although some may find the style somewhat contrived and overblown, I was continually impressed by his skill in moulding words into distinctive, original images and thoughts. Often funny, entertaining yet farcical, the narrative keeps returning to the alternating spark and pathos of Smith’s encounters with the sharp-tongued, unpredictable Tabitha Lovell, the bird in a cage of her own making. He is drawn to her fatefully, despite knowing that “there is something very wrong with her”.

He made me realise how the lack of coins in New York obliged people to trade with a bewildering variety of coins of arbitrary value “ a Morisco piece we can’t read, but it weighs in at fourteen pennyweight, sterling, so we’ll call it two-and-six”. He can write a whole page on the simple act of walking in near darkness through a hall and up a staircase: “picture frames set faint rumours of gold around rectangles of darkness or curious glitters too shadowed to make out, as if Lovell had somehow collected, and drowned, a stairwell’s worth of distant constellations”. And so the narrative rattles on through the twists and turns of pursuits of a thief, sinister bonfire celebrations, melodramatic escapes across roof-tops, imprisonment, amateur dramatics, and duelling in the snow.

Francis Spufford could make paint drying sound interesting, as when Smith describes a boat trip up the Hudson River through a fog which shifts from “coagulated grey curtains…. to mere streamers and tatters….. while little cats’-paws of breeze come wrinkling and dabbing…..scuffing the water… from silver to pewter” or observes the winter ice forming on the East River, “into whose depths you could look and see swirls of grey brine and glassy freshwater fused together as still and rigid as the heart of a child’s marble.

Beneath the flippant, tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a varied cast of well-drawn characters with hints of their failings and secrets, run the darker currents of the serious rivalry between the Governor and smoothly menacing, power-hungry Judge De Launcey, the crude and corrupt system of justice, and the contemptuous exploitation of the slaves on whom the prosperity of the colony is based. There is the lurking knowledge that even a happy ending will be short-lived, since the colony is shortly to be blasted apart by the War of Independence with Great Britain.

On finishing this book I was left with a sense of disappointment, partly because the verbal pyrotechnics of this well-plotted page-turner made other novels seem bland. It was also due to my finding the denouement revealing Smith’s much-hinted at but long-kept secret something of an under-developed anti-climax, and the final unsettling twist too clever by half. Yet I did not mind that the ending is inconclusive. In general, for sheer originality and the quality of the writing, this book would make a deserving winner of the Man Booker Prize.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.

This imaginative yarn set in the 1890s revolves around Cora Seaborne, the unconventional young widow who acknowledges her sense of relief over the death of a sadistic husband. Within days of his demise, she has left the bustle of London with its sharp social divisions for the stark beauty of the Essex coast, often obscured by shifting mists, accompanied by Martha, the competent nanny who never left and son Francis, who would nowadays be considered autistic. With his inability to show the normal affection of a child, and his obsession with collecting objects, Francis is a continual source of puzzled concern, but Cora obtains emotional support from Martha, who manages to combine this with her commitment to persuading wealthy men like her admirer Spencer to invest in the replacement of the London slums with decent housing for workers.

It being the 1890s, Cora is thought to have a “masculine mind”. Although a wealthy woman with the means to dress fashionably, she often tramps the country dressed like a bag lady, in a man’s tweed coat with grimy fingernails. Apart from being practical gear for a geologist, perhaps this is a sub-conscious desire to conceal her femininity, having been so abused by her husband. It is hard to believe that such an independent-minded woman would have submitted to this, but perhaps she was trapped by her initial youth and the social attitudes of the day.

Absorbed in her fashionable pursuit of fossils, Cora is intrigued by the “Essex Serpent”, a creature of local folklore who is thought to have made a recent return to prey on the the inhabitants of Aldwinter, terrifying them in the process. Cora harbours dreams of making her name as a female geologist through the discovery of some giant ichthyosaurus. Frustrated by his parishioners’ superstition, local vicar William Ransome is driven to hac away the carving of a sea serpent which adorns the arm of a church pew. Although holding diametrically opposed views on religion, William and Cora are drawn to each other by a powerful meeting of questioning minds, the joy of conversing and bouncing ideas off each other. But can such a friendship endure in 1890s England, when does friendship become love, and what is to be done since William Ransome already has a beautiful, sensitive wife whom neither William nor Cora could bear to hurt – although she is conveniently frail and consumptive, so perhaps they can have their cake and eat it if their love can survive all the interim setbacks?

At first, I found the characters somewhat unconvincing, such as the brilliant, eccentric surgeon Luke Garrett, and his wealthy friend Spencer. Too often both dialogues and descriptions seem artificial, clunky contrivances for informing the reader about the burning social issues of the day. Yet, the descriptions of the Essex countryside and shoreline, together with the unsettling suspected presence of the serpent, are well-written and evocative, and once William Ransome is established alongside Cora to provide the two most fully developed central characters, I found myself more fully engaged in the story. Sarah Perry is also good at writing about children.

Overall, it is a modern writer’s take on the late Victorian world a generation after the period of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Written somewhat in their vein, it avoids cloying sentimentality, yet is over-long and repetitious in places, and soft-centred at its core, although these are all features of the writing of this period.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

 

This is my review of All We Shall Know by Donal Ryan.

With a masters in journalism, a frustrated would-be writer, her prose searing and insightful in print, but foul-mouthed in her speech, self-absorbed, quick to fly off the handle, swinging between extreme attachments and violent dislikes, unstable to the point of being a little mad, the inaptly named Melody is difficult to like. Donal Ryan contrives to hook us onto this sad, often violent tale, by the power of his quicksilver flow of words, the original, striking descriptions and wry Irish turn of phrase which makes one wonder how such articulate people can so often fail to avert trouble by sheer verbal skill alone.

We know from the first paragraph that Melody has got herself pregnant by seventeen-year-old Martin Toppy, a pupil almost half her age, the handsome, illiterate son of a famous Irish Traveller. Although not prepared to risk telling her husband Pat the truth about the baby’s parentage, it is clear that she expects the pregnancy to bring to an end what has evidently been a tempestuous marriage, with Melody’s unpredictable, unreasonable behaviour the root of the problem . As Melody reveals her past, layer by layer, it becomes ever more apparent that her ability to relate positively to others has been blighted by a profound sense of guilt over her treatment years before of her former best schoolmate, Breedie Flynn. Melody's current striking up of an almost obsessive friendship with the young Traveller Mary Crothery becomes an attempt to atone for the past actions which haunt her. Even in this, she may be accused of a degree of manipulative control-freakery.

Judging by this and Donal Ryan’s first novel, “The Spinning Heart” which I found superior perhaps because less intensely bleak as regards the unrelenting piling up of misfortunes, the author’s central theme is the interplay of dysfunctional families and neighbours in close-knit, claustrophobic small-town Irish communities, riddled with Catholic guilt, struggling to adjust to external pressures for change.

If I had not known to the contrary, I would have said this novel was the work of a woman, as the chapters chart the course of Melody’s pregnancy, week by week. Yet I am not sure a woman would be likely to take with such apparent ease the course of action she takes at the end of the novel, by way of expiating past sin.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan.

It is interesting to be reminded that the Middle East was once briefly Christian, and as unstable and riven by violent dissension as it is now.

In the ruins of a monastery near Aleppo, archaeologists unearth a tightly sealed wooden book, containing parchment manuscripts, the memoirs of a fifth century Egyptian-born monk and self-taught physician called Hypa, whose wanderings took him to Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch.

A thoughtful and observant man, his avid reading, including of “forbidden books” has stimulated his questioning mind. In a period preceding the rise of Islam, he sees Christians behaving with a savage bigotry to rival a modern-day IS fighter: their brutal murder of his father, for quietly following his pagan beliefs, or of the gifted female mathematician Hypatia (from whom he has taken his adopted name), denounced for heresy by the vicious Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. On a personal level, he wrestles with the overwhelming desire to love the beautiful Martha, which is incompatible with his chosen life as monk. On a larger scale, there is the use of abstruse differences in doctrine as a weapon in power struggles over a religion divided between Cyril who looks to Rome, and Bishop Nestorius, who has become Hypa’s friend through a shared love of books, based at Antioch.

As he writes, Hypa is continually distracted by Azazeel, one of many names for the devil, yet clearly the voice of Hypa’s own “inner voice”.

At one point, Azazeel asks Hypa, “Did God create man, or was it the other way round?” He answers his own question: “Hypa, in every age man creates a god to his liking and his god is always his visions, his impossible dreams and his wishes”. When Hypa whispers, “But Azazeel, you are the cause of evil in the world.” Azazeel responds, “Hypa, be sensible. I’m the one who justifies evil. So evil causes me.” Later he urges, “Wake up, Hypa, and come to your senses. Your desire for her (Martha) is crushing you and breaking your heart. Go to her, take her and leave this country. Delight in her and make her happy, then heap curses on me because I tempted you. Then all three of us will thrive, having fulfilled ourselves.”

The book may be an “acquired taste”, perplexing and tedious for someone with either little knowledge of or no interest in religion. Although the translation from Arabic is in general excellent, some descriptions are over-detailed, dull and hard to follow. Yet the book creates a vivid impression of what life might have been like fifteen centuries ago, with realistic characters revealing all too recognisable human flaws. The author also shows the appeal of a life of contemplation: there is a striking passage in which Hypa observes the habits of the wild doves, who mate indiscriminately with each other, care jointly for the young, living together in a seemingly peaceful community, causing him to wonder why humans cannot do the same. It occurs to him that another monk throws stones at the birds because he is afraid of the fact that at heart, he likes them.

I do not know to what extent the slow pace and precise detail are a feature of Arab writing. Some readers have criticised the Muslim author’s interpretation of rival early Christian doctrines but this does not seem to me to matter. What is important is the portrayal of a humane and conflicted individual to whom we can relate, despite the radical differences in our lives.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien.

It is not surprising that the enigmatic, charming Doctor Vladimir Dragan, self-styled healer and sex therapist causes a stir in the Irish backwater of Clooniola, steeped in Catholic tradition and Celtic superstition, but beginning to feel the effects of the EU, bringing funds for a motorway and a stream of east European workers to revive the tourist trade.

Is Vlad truly spiritual or a charlatan? He is clearly escaping from his previous life, but is this as a victim, or perpetrator of war crimes? Has grumpy ex-Schoolmaster Diarmuid hit the nail on head in likening him to Rasputin? To what extent is he a thoroughly human mix of strengths and failings for which there are extenuating circumstances?

The “little red chairs” of the title refer to the 643 set out along the main street in Sarajevo to commemorate the number of children who died in the long siege conducted by Bosnian Serbs, with 11,541 red chairs to mark the overall death toll. Edna O’Brien is ambitious in attempting to combine a portrayal of the psychology of a leader driven to genocide with an understanding of the ongoing suffering yet resilience of the migrants forced to leave their families and possessions in an attempt to form a more secure home in a very different and often unwelcoming culture.

Not having read Edna O’Brien for years, I was at first impressed by her distinctive style, poetical Irish whimsy with flashes of sharp wit, but would have been tempted to give up around page 89 if this had been the work of a less celebrated and experienced writer. I found it hard to forgive some very unconvincing scenes, like the farcical book group in which the locals read “the chapter called Dido from the Aeneid, Book IV”. Apart from the fact that the Irish are too often portrayed as stereotypes or caricatures, there is a surfeit of characters, not leaving enough space to develop them as individuals. I never had a sense of what really “makes Vlad tick” and agree that using a deceased friend in one of his dreams to reveal some of his guilty past to the reader is one contrivance too many. I don’t know to what extent Edna O’Brien has used real examples for her portraits of migrants, but their stories are too often provided in over-long monologues in an artificial style which jars as unrealistic. I know it is hard to create authentic “voices” for characters using English as a second language, but everyone appears to have a “voice” which is a variation of Edna O’Brien’s.

I found some of the author’s “vignettes” moving or amusing – the young bartender Dara, intrigued but puzzled by Vlad, the description of a robin “same tilt to the head, the little flirt, with her tricks, landing then darting off into the thickets”, Fidelma's persecution by the malicious cleaning supervisor Medusa, with her snake-like plait, the satnav which had “lost its navigating marbles”. However, there seem to be too many digressions, so that a potentially powerful theme based on a thinly-disguised Radovan Karadzic is dissipated, tailing off into a somewhat sentimental conclusion.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Penguin Modern Classics) by Shirley Jackson.

In this quirky psychological novel, eighteen-year-old narrator Merricat Blackwood is part child-like tomboy, part manipulative sociopath, fantasising about “living on the moon” with her beautiful elder sister Constance, who may be an agoraphobic with an obsessive desire to bottle food and clean the house, or simply unwilling to face the world after being acquitted of the poisoning of four close members of her family. Why was Constance found innocent with so much circumstantial evidence against her? What could have motivated her to commit the murders, particularly as she seems so gentle and incapable of violence? Is there a more obvious suspect, in which case how can this possibility have been overlooked?

The horrific crime has turned the local villagers’ longstanding resentment of a snobbish family into vicious bullying, masking fear of possible deviancy beyond their comprehension. Wealthy neighbours tend rather to a prurient curiosity, in its way just as bad. Shirley Jackson plays on our very similar reaction, skilfully dripping out clues to arouse and sustain our sense of unease and anticipation of horror beneath the bland exterior of a well-ordered, New England house with Dresden figurines and a harp in the drawing room and spice cookies cooling in the kitchen.

“I found a nest of baby snakes near the creek and killed them all; I dislike snakes, and Constance had never asked me not to”, remarks the narrator Merricat, casually chilling. The menace contrasts with passages of innocent beauty as she plays with her acutely observed cat Jonah in “the long field which looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth”.

How will the arrival of Cousin Charles, clearly interested in the Blackwood’s safe possibly packed with money, disrupt the contented balance in which the two young women against all rational expectations manage to conduct their lives, caring for the sole survivor of the poisoning, a half-senile, wheelchair-bound Uncle Julian?

As the story spins off the rails in its dramatic climax, it veers into black comedy so that, unless a liking for this genre is sufficient, one is left with admiration for Shirley Jackson’s writing, rather than any real empathy with the arguably insane characters. Casting around for deeper levels of meaning, I noted her portrayal of human nature – the way in which people who regard themselves as decent and normal may turn against individuals they find odd, even to the point of getting carried away into extreme behaviour, Nazi Germany being a case in point. The hostility of Jackson’s New York neighbours to her Jewish husband may have fed this theme.

Likewise, Jackson’s studies of social anthropology and interest in witchcraft may have moulded Merricat’s behaviour as she buries objects, hangs her father’s book in a tree, or invokes magic words to ward off unwelcome influences from outside, like Cousin Charles. Observation of once wealthy families, clinging to their superiority and clutter of possessions from past generations, unable to face up to the changing times, is another theme.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Foundling’s War by Michel Déon.

Enjoyment of Michel Déon’s French take on Tom Jones, a rambling account of the foundling boy Jean Arnaud’s adventures, which end mid-stream with his departure for the Front on the outbreak of WW2, in the company of conman Palfy, gave me sufficient enthusiasm to start on the sequel – but this proved a disappointment, with all the shortcomings of the first novel magnified in spades. Déon has been praised and honoured for his straightforward prose style as opposed to Sartre’s intellectual existentialism, but the novel is far too sprawling and long-drawn-out.

The thin plot is dominated by Jean’s infatuation with Claude, a beautiful young married woman with a small child and mysterious absent husband. Portrayed as pure and virtuous, she effectively strings Jean along, accepting his moral support, claiming to love him, even letting him into her bed, but for a long time denying him sexual intercourse. Perhaps fulfilling the male author’s fantasy, Jean “has his cake and eats it” by enjoying in parallel a “no strings attached” physical relationship with film actress Nelly Tristan, transformed in his company from a foul-mouthed, tippling social embarrassment into a sensitive declaimer of sentimental French poetry.

The weak storyline is padded out with lengthy recollections of events from the previous novel or with tedious scenes which often seem quite pointless. Déon’s claim that it is possible to understand this sequel without reading the first book is a little misleading: those taking him at his word are likely to become confused over details of Jean’s parentage and his first loves, like Chantal.

Whereas some interesting characters were developed in the first book, like Jean’s restless grandfather Antoine and the village curate, the sequel is dominated by too many exaggerated and generally unappealing caricatures: Palfy, with his network of louche friends and lack of compunction over fraternising with Nazis; the “ultra-respectable” brothel keeper Madame Michette with her bizarre mix of gullibility and guile, and fantasies of being a spy; Jesus, the Spanish painter with the irritating lisp who is prepared to sell his artistic soul for money and avoid commitment until his sudden falling for “enemy German” Laura, or La Garenne, the crooked dealer in art porn. The lesser characters are mainly bland ciphers. There is little sense of place, like the lure of the South of France for Antoine in his Bugatti (previous novel).

In the first book, Déon sometimes revealed himself as an intrusive narrator, over-anxious to reveal future events. In the sequel, this tendency has run out of control, as he even destroys the tension of the two most dramatic, all too rare, incidents by digressing into what lies in store. He keeps giving us potted histories, often in the form of letters, rather than taking the trouble to develop characters and weave events into the plot. This seems like lazy writing. He consistently “tells” rather than “shows”, bludgeoning us into what we should think, with often heavy-handed philosophising, rather than let us experience events directly and form our own judgements.

Just occasionally, there are flickers of insight, as when the narrator (better still if it could have been a character) observes how the isolation caused by war blunts the impact of a tragic event through the delay in receiving it. At one point, Jean actually reflects on the contrast between the simple, honest couple who are sheltering him, and the “artificial et brilliant” life he has been leading.

Handsome, charming, easy-going Jean has always tended to consort with raffish characters, but it is troubling to see him frittering away his time in the company of wheeler-dealer Nazis and collaborators on the make. Although a contrast to many WW2 novels, perhaps in some ways more realistic to see the Occupation of France from this viewpoint, I felt uneasy about the shallow, cynical gloss over the hardship of those who refused to or could not profit from the Occupation, the suffering and risk taken by members of the Resistance and the mistreatment of French Jews, as at the Vel d’Hiv.

Apart from providing a means of practising my French, the novel often bored me, and since it seems to me have to been still further weakened in translation, I have only given 2 stars for the English version.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

 

This is my review of Vinegar Girl: The Taming of the Shrew Retold by Anne Tyler.

In this modern take on Shakepeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”, having been thrown out of university for insulting her professor, spiky, forthright Kate Battista has spent the past decade in a dead-end job as preschool assistant, whilst trying to act as a mother-substitute for her flirty, far from dumb blonde, adolescent sister Bunny, and keeping house for her impractical academic and frankly control-freak father. When his selfishness leads him to overstep the mark, by trying to manipulate Kate into marrying his brilliant East European research assistant Pyotr, so that he can stay in the States after his visa has run out, Kate understandably rebels.

This is the basis of an often very funny, shrewdly observed novel, superficially lightweight with an ending sewn up a little too neatly for my taste, yet suggesting darker currents beneath the surface. Even minor characters are given some depth, with a mixture of good points and human failings. I must have enjoyed the book since I sat up to 2 a.m to finish it in one sitting, but had a few reservations, which I suppose at least have the merit of provoking discussion.

Is it, for instance, likely, that a strong-minded, independent young woman with the intellect to study science at university would have put up for so long with the constrained world of the Little People’s School, or have avoided being sacked long ago for her lack of “tact, restraint and diplomacy”? By the same token, would she have accepted for so long her father’s rules about cooking meat mash to last a week and not emptying dishwashers in the interest of his theories on health and efficiency? Is her outspokenness not so much a sign of independence, but rather the result of a lack of socialisation into “social norms”, owing to a depressed, prematurely deceased mother (driven to despair by her incompatible husband?) and an often absent father with inadequate parenting skills?

A minor point is that Kate’s four-year-old charges seem rather advanced for their age, but since Anne Tyler has clearly observed children very closely, perhaps she has struck the right note.

When Kate suggests at one point that men are at a disadvantage compared to women because “they think they should be in charge, in control; they don’t dare show their feelings” this reminds me of the “behind every successful man there’s a strong woman” unfeminist twisting of arguments with which I was brought up in the pre-equality past. Kate’s argument that a woman should let a man into her more “empathic country” to give them both space to be themselves, sounds somewhat patronising and smacks of self-justification. Does Anne Tyler mean us to accept this at face value, or to take it with a pinch of cynicism? Still, I believe that Shakespeare’s Kate was initially simply too stroppy to make a “good wife”, and never meant to be a feminist, as we understand the term, at all.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje.

Having left Sri Lanka to train in the West, forensic anthropologist Anil Tissera has been selected by an international human rights group to investigate possible atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan government in its attempt to control insurgents in the north and separatist guerrillas in the south. This involves working with Sarath Diyesena, the enigmatic archaeologist whom she is unsure how far to trust, because one of his relatives may be a government minister. For whatever reason, he discourages her from reading too much into the skeleton nicknamed “Sailor”, which she is convinced belongs to a recent victim, hidden amongst older human remains at a site not open to the public. Admittedly, there are some grounds for Sarath’s cynicism over short-term visitors from the West who, based in luxury hotel rooms, make casual assumptions about the country, distorted by “false empathy and blame”. “I’d believe your arguments more if you lived here,” he tells her. “You can’t just slip in, make a discovery and leave”.

The opening chapters led me to expect a political thriller in the mould of Graham Greene, but since the author is in fact more of a poet than a novelist, the narrative drive, which has a low priority for him, soon splinters into a disjointed, sometimes dreamlike sequence, swerving back and forth in time, between different viewpoints. These include: Sarath’s brother Gamini who has become obsessed with caring for war casualties, high on the drugs he needs to keep himself going; Ananda, sometime painter of eyes on the face of carved Buddhas; Palipani, translator of ancient scripts and rock graffiti who seems to have ruined his reputation by fabricating a text, when in practice perhaps he had found “hidden histories intentionally lost”, a parallel for the suppression of truth in the recent history of Sri Lanka.

I appreciate that a stream of consciousness may reveal more about the complex interweaving of culture and individual relations in the real-life struggles of a war-torn country than a straightforward documentary approach, but I found this book hard-going, mainly because of the written style. I assume that Ondaatje undertook impressive reseach of, for instance, forensics and medical practice, but this tends either to be presented in rather unnatural dialogue and passages of condensed information, like the notes for a novel rather than the work itself, or through grim scenes of death and treatment of hospital patients which tend to drift into inappropriate sentimentality.

Perhaps the weakest aspects of the story are the flashbacks to Anil’s unsatisfactory relationships with a married American writer called Cullis and a female former work colleague called Leaf. Their sketchiness and irrelevance to the drama of Sri Lanka may of course be intentional, suggesting the disjunction between Anil’s westernised persona and her native roots.

Although Ondaatje is clearly capable of writing realistic dialogue, too often it does not ring true. The wording of sentences often jars, as if written by someone with an imperfect grasp of English, but the author has spent most of his life in England and Canada. Many incidents verge on the implausible or ludicrous, such as the verging on necrophilic scenes involving the skeleton Sailor who is at various points laid out to communicate with the stars, danced with, or his former occupation deduced from the most tenuous evidence.

Despite its huge potential and originality, there is in general a self-indulgent, rambling, pretentious quality to the novel which grates on me. I accept that this view is a question of taste, and many readers may be entranced by, say, the flash forward images of Palipana’s niece honouring his death:

“She had already cut one of his phrases into the rock…which she had held onto like a raft in her years of fear. She had chiselled it where the horizon of water was, so that depending on tide and pull of the moon, the words in the rock would submerge or hang above their reflection or be revealed in both elements. Now she stood waist deep in the water cutting the Sinhala letters….He had once shown her such runes, finding them even in his blindness, and their marginalia of ducks, for eternity….In the tank at Kaludiya Pokuna the yard-long sentence still appears and disappears..” and so on in Kubla Khanish vein. Except that Coleridge did not mix up his romantic poetry with the exposure of political corruption and the rootless alienation of a young woman caught between different cultures, in an infusion that fails to coalesce.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Tales of the Jazz Age (Alma Classics) by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This is a collection of short stories produced by a still youthful Scott Fitzgerald before he fell prey to the alcoholism which befuddled so many of his characters. The list of contents is accompanied by the author’s own explanatory comments, written at the point when they were assembled in 1922 from different magazines where they had been originally published. He was clearly a natural story teller, capable of producing a piece at great speed, such as “The Camel’s Back” which he wrote in a day.

His style can be quite pedantically C19: “So gaily and noisily were the peace and prosperity hymned by the scribes and poets of the conquering people that more and more spenders had gathered from the provinces to drink the wine of excitement, and faster and faster did the the merchants dispose of their trinkets and slippers until they sent up a mighty cry for more trinkets and more slippers in order that they might give in barter what was demanded of them”. At times, Scott Fitzgerald reminds me of PG Wodehouse or Jerome K Jerome, but without the humour, in fact, with a darker thread beneath the flippancy. I found the stories, set mainly in the well-heeled middle class world of 1920s urban America, quite dated, and grew rapidly tired of the boozy – if skilfully lampooned – US version of Hooray Henries, and the shallow, over-protected young daughters of Aluminium Men, Iron Men or Brass Men, etcetera, destined only for the marriage market.

Although I appreciate the author’s fluency and wit, I could only take so much of these stories, choosing to focus on those with more original and creative plots, such as “The diamond as big as the Ritz” which imagines the consequences of discovering a diamond so huge that to advertise one’s find would immediately destroy the scarcity value and therefore monetary benefit of the stone. This is also a reflection on the corrupting effect of power in a secret, self-contained world financed by judicial exploitation of the diamond.

“The Curious case of Benjamin Button”, recently made into a film, is also an interesting story, inspired by Mark Twain’s remark that “it was a pity that the best part of life came at the beginning and worst part at the end”, although I’m not sure everyone would agree that babyhood is the best part. Benjamin Button duly starts off as an old man, who find most companionship with his grandfather, ending up as a small boy who enjoys going to kindergarten and playing with his grandson. The best part of his life is the brief period in which his capacity and appearance match his actual age, so that he can be a successful soldier, a useful means of avoiding the wife who has become too old for his taste. Apart from the snobbery, there are frequent little flashes of racism which, although an aspect of the times, are a bit disconcerting now, as when Benjamin Button’s father, traumatised by the birth of a son who looks like an old man, passed “the bustling stores, the slave market (it’s the 1860s) and “for a dark instant wished passionately that his son was black”.

Despite its rather chauvinist ending, I liked the farcical ” The Camel’s Back”, about a young man who goes partying in a camel suit, with his taxi driver serving as the back legs, after a row with his fiancee who is reluctant to commit to marriage – this sounds very Bertie Woosterish. I was most impressed by “May Day” which in portraying the frenetic life in the New York of 1920, “in the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz” also manages to convey grim undercurrents beneath the hectic partying, with soldiers trying to adjust to life as peacetime nonetities and the hounding of socially conscious “communists” foreshadowing the McCarthyism to come.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars