October 2019 Books

This was not such a successful month of reading but there was one saving grace in the bunch, and thank goodness because it was the longest.

Highs

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

Known to be one of the lengthiest novels in the English language, I was a little daunted by A Suitable Boy but it was high on my priority list for this year because it had been languishing on my shelf for a long while already and I would never make the time for it otherwise. It follows a few families living in a newly independent India and covers a lot of ground. There is of course the central plot of the search for a suitable husband for one of the protagonists of the novel, but it also spirals outward, taking in a broad scope of perspectives toward the political challenges facing post-Independence and post-partition India. It’s wonderfully and warmly written, and it envelops you in its world completely. For such a long book, Seth maintained my attention throughout, which is incredibly difficult. You do have to be prepared for lengthy parliament sessions, or descriptions of life in the local shoe factory, but I generally enjoyed these inclusions for the more complete world and greater scope the novel achieved as a result. In general I’m enjoying longer books at the moment for that reason - it just feels like they are doing more with their content.

I did also find it particularly interesting to compare this one with The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - I was actually reading them both at the same time - and I think they make good companions. Although they are very different in style, both books follow a cast of characters that make up a family unit (either conventional or otherwise) and examine political issues and unrest through their perspectives and their relationships with one another, with Seth’s book looking to the formative time of the 1950s, and Roy’s a more contemporary context. Roy’s book filled in some of the outsider perspectives that Seth didn’t cover, whilst his novel felt more akin to traditional nineteenth century storytelling. I really liked them both, and as I say they seemed to work nicely together inside my brain, each informing the other.

Lows

Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn

I hated this book and I always kind of feel bad when I hate books (especially ones I pick for book club!!!) because authors put so much work into writing books and I feel it’s not fair of me to come along and rip it to shreds. If I’m ever an author you best believe I’m not reading everyone’s reviews. So I’ll keep this short. Maybe. This book is part of the Patrick Melrose series which I didn’t realise until I was partway through it, but it can be read as a standalone as I did and it was nominated for the Booker on it’s own. So that’s a caveat on my review, because I haven’t read the other books. And according to people who have, this is not one of the best books in the series. Also I know the Melrose series is partly autobiographical and that he goes through/St Aubyn went through some pretty horrific stuff so I do feel nervous about approaching a book where someone is probably working through their trauma.

Nonetheless, in this particular book, without the context of the traumatic childhood that went before, Melrose comes across as extremely entitled and misogynistic, amongst other things. It follows him over the course of a number of summers as he bemoans the fact that his mother is leaving their second house in France to a hippy community that she is part of instead of him. The novel has no hope or lightness to it, and it feels constantly bitter and sad throughout, along with the issues of various unsavoury and cliched opinions towards women, ‘new money’, Americans and plus size people. And because there is a closeness between the narrative voice and Melrose, I didn’t feel like he was really viewed with a critical eye in any of this. So I really didn’t like it, but perhaps in the wider context of the whole series it would have been more understandable.

The Refugees by Vietnam Thanh Nguyen

I’m putting this in my lows even though it was a fine read because I loved Nguyen’s first book The Sympathizers so much and I was expecting a lot more from it. This is a collection of stories that follows a number of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants in America. Nguyen started his career as a university professor, and you can kind of tell in these stories. They seem a little by-the-book and dry, with none of the life and spark that you need in short stories to draw you in quickly. Also I compare all short story writers with Alice Munro these days, so that’s probably not that helpful. Anyway, perhaps Nguyen just isn’t a short story writer, which is fine because it is almost a whole different art form itself. But for me these were just totally unmemorable.

Ivanhoe by Walter Scott

So. Much. Jousting. I listened to this book which was a terrible idea - do not do this. It was hours of jousting. I’m getting flashbacks. I read(/listened to) this because I went to Edinburgh University and somehow never read any Walter Scott. But this novel was so boring I can’t even begin. So much extraneous detail, so little plot that I could actually enjoy. Having said that, I’m not put off Walter Scott for life; I sense that maybe his novels set in Scotland might actually be better reads for me, because he won’t be bogged down telling me what colour belt the swineherd is wearing for the purposes of historical accuracy.

Everything in between

The Long Take by Robin Robertson

After several reviews of this I read, I was expecting big things. And it was good! But not that good. I think lots of people lost their minds over this because of its experimental form, especially combined with its content. This is a noir narrative poem that describes a young man struggling with PTSD in post-World War II America, as he flits from city to city in search of something (the American Dream? Love? A sense of self?) I liked the noirish atmosphere, and I found the poetry fairly easy to grasp, but I just didn’t really sense any real depth to the book. Maybe I just didn’t read closely enough, but I wasn’t sure what the driving force behind the book was - was it to examine PTSD? Or the American city? And why did Robertson choose to put this form with this subject matter? I feel it was probably trying to do lots of things but felt slightly unfocused to me.