August 2019 Books
August was a very successful month; I read a lot (thank you, summer hols), and what I did read was either interesting or enjoyable or both (with minor exceptions).
Highs
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
The middle instalment of Liu’s The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, this is a truly excellent read for anyone interested in hard science fiction, or the ways in which science and literature can intersect and how productive and fascinating that can be. The trilogy examines what would happen if human society encountered a hostile alternate life form that was much more advanced technologically, imagining the ways we would adapt not just materially but also philosophically and morally. I’m currently a few hundred pages into the final book and I have to say I think The Dark Forest might end up being my favourite of the three [intersection from the future, it was], though we’ll have to wait and see. I’m making my way through them very slowly as I’m reading them on my kindle and because of my unread books challenge I am currently prioritising my physical books.
The Famished Road by Ben Okri
An unusual ‘high’ for me because I didn’t much enjoy the reading of this book. It’s another of those I read on a sunbed but I really shouldn’t have; it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to being read over a couple of days but rather should be taken in in short snippets. Nonetheless I found that this book has stuck with me and was an important read. It is set in Nigeria around the time of independence (I remember I couldn’t quite work out if it was before or after and it would bear a closer reading) and it follows Azaro, who is an abiku or spirit child. This means that he has a kind of double vision; he is mired in the day to day reality of life in poverty whilst also being able to sense and experience the spirit world. The novel has a very surreal and alienating style that seems at times almost senseless and assaults you with imagery, whilst also being fairly cyclical and repetitive. This sounds like a bit of a nightmare, I know, but in reality it does an excellent job of conveying the numbing nightmare of poverty and the instability of the new state in such a way that doesn’t become a kind of poverty porn. I suppose what I’m trying to explain is an almost Brechtian ‘V-effect’; in alienating you as a reader from the emotion of Azaro, Okri manages to make the political message of the piece very effective. Which conversely makes it quite moving. I’m very glad I read it and I could see where it has influenced authors that came after particularly Marlon James and Black Leopard, Red Wolf which I read this year.
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov
Pnin follows the life of the title character Timofey Pnin who is a Russian professor in an American university (and is an iteration of Nabokov himself) as he rather comically finds himself in various scrapes. He is an extremely lovable character and his search for companionship and love lends this little novella depth. Don’t get me wrong though, this is still Nabokov so the writing is top notch; slippery, rolling from one idea to the next and constantly surprising. Plus there’s something going on with the narrator that I didn’t fully catch but would bear a good rereading, so there’s more to it than there seems. Ultimately it’s an excellent character study told over various little vignettes and is both amusing and entertaining. Highly recommend.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
This book is mostly made up of little meditations on various imagined cities that is enfolded within a framing narrative whereby Marco Polo is describing the places he has been to Kublai Khan. Each of the cities has a different feature that generally illuminates either something about cities and places and geographies or about ourselves and how we create and make places for ourselves. The short meditations are very poetic and beautifully written and I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a short but fulfilling read.
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Oh, this is a good old fashioned yarn. Imagine Dickens but written by a woman and with a queer edge. It’s about an orphan girl who is brought up by a group of thieves in London and finds herself engaged with an associate of theirs in a scheme to defraud a young innocent girl in the countryside of her inheritance. There are twists and turns and the writing is effortless and immensely readable. And it is so very satisfying seeing one of these books set in Victorian London turned on its head in terms of its gender roles. Highly recommend! Read it when you just want something straight up enjoyable to read.
Lows
Neuromancer by William Gibson
I feel a bit bad making this a ‘low’, but then again, I really didn’t enjoy reading this book. It’s one of the best known cyberpunk novels, and I’ve got to say after reading this one I’m not sure I want to read too many more; I like watching cyberpunk films but as a reading experience I found this irritating. It’s chock full of jargon and feels for most of the book to be more style than substance. Having said that, I did like the ending when it finally gets to the point and explores some of the underlying ideas about artificial intelligence and intelligence in general. But generally speaking? It wasn’t for me.
The Call of the Toad by Günther Grass
This book is about a German man and Polish woman who fall in love in Gdańsk (or Danzig) and start a business whereby Germans can be buried in their ancestral home (most were forced to leave Gdańsk in the aftermath of the war). This novel is extremely bureaucratic and businesslike, and I found it pretty boring to be honest. As their idea gets more and more out of hand and profitable, the couple distance themselves from the project, and the novel is definitely interested in the advent of capitalism in a formerly communist country. But as much as I understood all of that, I just couldn’t enjoy it. I will be trying some of Grass’ other work, however, because I’ve heard good things, but I’m not sure this was the best example of his work.
Everything in between
Abeng by Michelle Cliff
For my undergraduate dissertation, I wrote on Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven, which follows its protagonist, Clare Savage, in her young adult life. This book is a prequel to that novel, and follows a young Clare growing up in Jamaica. As a light-skinned middle-class girl, she encounters her own privilege in ways that inform her later life. Cliff also refers to a lot of Jamaican history throughout her books, particularly the lives of Maroons who were escaped slaves that created their own societies away from the plantations. It’s an informative read and Cliff’s writing is very accomplished.
Death and the Penguin by Andrew Kurkov
This novel describes the life of a writer who is employed to write obituaries for people who haven’t yet died in post-Soviet Ukraine. And he has adopted a penguin from the local zoo. It is a satirical book with a bleak style that describes the lonely life of its protagonist, and in turn the state of Ukraine. I enjoyed its slow burn towards a somewhat hopeful ending.
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa
This is a modern classic written in the 50s about the changes that took place in Sicily during the Risorgimento, when Italy was united from various kingdoms. The reigning prince watches as his power wanes in the face of a new middle class. Whilst I found the descriptions of the sumptuous life of the Sicilian royals interesting and evocative, I found it difficult to sympathise with Prince Fabrizio and I didn’t find it to be quite interesting or enjoyable enough to make it deserving of its place as one of the most important novels written in the twentieth century, which is an accolade often afforded it.
A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee
This is a solid follow-up to A Rising Man, in which Captain Wyndham investigates a new murder. This time he is a witness to the assassination of the Prince of Sambalpore, which takes him away from Calcutta and into the underworld of the royalty and their political affiliations. If you enjoy a good historical crime, you can’t really go wrong with Mukherjee’s Wyndham books, but I can’t say that I will be actively seeking out more of his work.
John Crow’s Devil by Marlon James
As a big Marlon James fan, this was the final book of his that I hadn’t read and it is in fact his debut. It is an engaging novel about the clash between two preachers for religious control of a village in Jamaica in the 50s. There is a hint of magic and it has the beginnings of the violent intensity that marks James’ later novels.
The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
This is a very carefully researched historical novel that follows the lives of Jonah Hancock, a shipping merchant living in Georgian London, and Angelica Neal, a prostitute who is just reintroducing herself to high society after being squirrelled away by her last client. The fantastical elements of this novel are more subtle than I expected - especially considering that title - and don’t really get going until the last hundred pages of this rather long book but I did appreciate its rather ambitious marriage of fantasy and feminist psychoanalysis. It just possibly came a little late to be fully realised.