Monday September 1, 2008

Child 44

Call me unusual, but I found Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44 perfect summer reading. Although large and cumbersome, the hardback edition was always high on the list when packing our beach kitbag, and it always went in alongside the crocs, bucket and spade and water bottle. Smith’s debut novel has received a lot of attention for being part of the 2008 Booker longlist and, uncharacteristic for the Booker, being a thriller. This is also a novel that takes many thriller conventions (a serial killer, a wrong man chase) and wraps them up in the setting of 1950s Russia. The biting cold, the fear of being turned in by one’s own family, the torture and confession. Yes, it all made gripping summer reading.

Tom Rob Smith: Child 44

Leo Demidov, a state security agent, is called in to pacify a family who are pleading that their young son has been murdered. The official line is that there was an unfortunate accident, and that murders are simply not commited in the neat and tidy climate of Communism. Leo is happy to go along with this, although the family concede through reasons of fear rather than reliable evidence. Leo returns to his day job, pursuing and apprehending the latest in a long line of suspect traitors. Although he pleads his innocence, the arrested man is routinely tortured for a confession and executed. What follows is one of the many fascinating twists of this novel, where one of the names provided by the tortured man is Leo’s own wife. Is she a suspect? Is Leo being punished for taking too much of an interest in the accidental death of the child? Is this the revenge tactics of a fellow officer? Leo is subsequently ordered to investigate his wife’s movements and what follows is a very well constructed and memorable episode, where he follows her on the network of Moscow’s underground, himself being followed by another agent. It’s pure Hitchcock, and I imagine that the film rights for this novel are already in someone’s eager hands. Just don’t cast Tom Hanks.

But what’s happened to the murder story? you may be asking , although Smith doesn’t rush with the serial killer thread and is more intent in the first half of the novel to establish character and setting. When Leo is demoted after failing to denounce his wife (although she remains at this stage an ambiguous character) and the Demidovs are relocated to a slum town outside of Moscow another victim is discovered, and Leo slowly finds out that the original death he was asked to sweep aside was a murder and was one of many. Child number 44. Cranked up to a reasonable tension, the novel then descends into more obvious territory, part James Bond escapes (a memorable one from a moving train, a less convincing one involving a car chase), part gut churning forensics (both in murder and interrogation victims). At times Smith is too keen to tie up all of the loose ends. He’s even cheeky enough to set things up for a sequel. But I found Child 44 above average for a thriller, and Smith just about gets away with the preposterous explanation for the sequence of murders and their connection with Leo. For me the book gained strength from the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion it creates, perhaps something of a cliché for a depiction of Stalinist Russia although he’s careful not to go too far with this. Leo Demidov is also interesting as the flawed lead, and Smith pulls the reader towards the plight of a man who’s done some terrible deeds, and made some awful decisions, in his past. What didn’t work so well for me was the frantic conclusion, although the final twist is delivered with some aplomb. It may be a ridiculous and far fetched premise, but Smith carries it off rather well.

So this was the novel that, albeit temporarily, broke my book buying ban. Some critics have been harsh, perhaps because of the Booker connection, but I really, really enjoyed this and recommend it for all. So there. It was a worthy relapse from the book buying, and I fully expect next year’s beaches to be awash with the paperback edition.

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Tuesday August 26, 2008

All Quiet on the Western Front

I feel agitated; but I don’t want to be, because it isn’t right. I want to get that quiet rapture back, feel again, just as before, that fierce and unnamed passion I used to feel when I looked at my books. Please let the wind of desire that rose from the multi-coloured spines of those books catch me up again, let it melt the heavy, lifeless lead weight that is there somewhere inside me, and awaken in me once again the impatience of the future, the soaring delight in the world of the intellect – let it carry me back into the ready-for-anything lost world of my youth.
I sit and wait.

For a reader weaned on Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, I’ve put off All Quiet on the Western Front until now. Erich Remarque’s 1929 anti-war novel has escaped me for only the foolish belief that I didn’t need to read another First World War novel. I was wrong.

All Quiet on the Western Front is particularly potent for being a German anti-war novel, suggesting why many are drawn towards joining the army for the rewards of superiority it can give, personified in the story by Remarque’s bullying drill sergeant. The novel hints that dominant behaviour is an ugly and contagious part of human nature, one of the reasons why the Nazis were probably intent on burning the book; actions which then led to the author’s subsequent exile. As a young German soldier drawn to enlist with his fellow classmates mainly at the insistence of their schoolteacher, the fictional character Paul Bäumer narrates this absorbing, harrowing and thought provoking book. His nationality and the side he fights for matters not; as Bäumer quickly realises, there is no clearly defined enemy in the insanity of trench warfare. But that a German writer has produced such a powerful work makes it all the more poignant.

Erich Maria Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front

Remarque served in the First World War, although this novel is only partly autobiographical. He spent some time in a military hospital, and the scenes where Bäumer is treated are particularly convincing. The bloodshed of the battlefield is as upsetting as you might expect, and I found the realism of these scenes particularly disturbing for a novel written in 1929. Not because this is little more than a decade after the events took place, but because the writing is fresh, modern and full of grim insight. Bäumer and his friends discuss the reasons for the conflict they are trapped in but come to no conclusions. They don’t really understand the reasons why they were fighting that war. I certainly don’t really grasp why the First World War was fought either. Do you?

All Quiet on the Western Front goes much further than just graphically depicting the horrors of war. The quotation I’ve opened with is from Bäumer’s spell of leave, where he visits his family home. Sitting in his room, he realises how the war has removed him from the true, free living individual he once was. He has no interest in picking up the books that once absorbed him. It’s a very moving and sad scene. There’s also several passages where Remarque dwells on the unkindness between supposedly fellow comrades. Returning to the character of the bullying drill sergeant, he follows Bäumer and his friends as they lie in wait for and subsequently beat up the man who has made thier lives a misery. They feel refreshed and vindicated; Remarque leaves it up to the reader to decide if their actions are justifiable. Similarly, another friend of Bäumer’s is placed in charge of a Home Guard platoon to discover the very teacher who urged his pupils to go to war amongst his ranks. More ritual humiliation follows, and again Bäumer and his peers see it as fitting treatment.

Although this is a novel that fiercely opposes war, it is knowing enough to question the contradictions of human nature and ends on a sour note when Bäumer concedes that the generation following his will quickly forget the 1914-1918 war, or at least find its imprortance muted. There is a particularly telling episode where, seperated from his allies and taking refuge in a shell hole in no-man’s-land, he stabs to death a French soldier to save himself. He’s mortified by his actions, attempts to save the dying soldier, eventually mulling over the contents of the corpse’s wallet. This doesn’t last long; self-preservation takes over and Bäumer realises he must forget the identity of the dead soldier and return himself safely to his trench. Life goes on. The impatience of the future.

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Friday August 22, 2008

Monkey Magic

Anyone of a certain age will remember the very strange television programme called Monkey. This Chinese TV series was dubbed into English and aired by the BBC in the late 70s/early 80s. Each week three characters called Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy had mad adventures and jumped about. That was about as far as it went, and if you were a fan of Monkey you probably also liked The Water Margin.

Monkey on tv

My ears pricked up recently when I heard that Damon Albarn had written a stage musical based on the 16th Century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en. Monkey: Journey to the West continues the Monkey legend and features artwork by Jamie Hewlett, who was responsible for the Gorillaz look and feel.

Monkey on stage

I’ve been a fan of Albarn for ages. His music, through Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad and the Queen has always been excellent and inventive. He’s also never shy to push the boat out, and this latest project sees him leaving the shore completely. The album Journey to the West was released this week and I admit my first impressions were ones of bafflement. I guess I was expecting an extension to Gorillaz, but that’s not the case. Whilst the two albums Albarn made with that band were pretty experimental at times, Monkey makes them look like Bucks Fizz records. It’s challenging to say the least, Albarn doesn’t sing on it and it largely comes across as Brian Eno after too much rice wine. I kind of gave up on it all last night. I even emailed a friend saying the album was rubbish.

But gingerly I put the album back on again tonight (or, in the modern way, fired it up in iTunes). The headache that’s been bugging me all week and making me grumpy has almost cleared and I’m finding fresh and original things in this weird music. What’s a barrier is the lack of the visual feast I would imagine that the original stage show was, but this is still a worthy addition to the Albarn canon. It’s not one for the dinner party, even if you’re cooking for die-hard Damon Albarn fans – they’re likely to have the same first impressions as me. But it goes in the grower category, and I’ve already identified two really stand out tracks, Heavenly Peach Banquet and Monkey Bee. This is a record I might be listening to for a long time to make sense of. At least until his next project comes along.

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Thursday August 21, 2008

Library Days

From Booking Through Thursday:

What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?

My mother used to take me to the library. I remember it being a very long walk, across the iron bridges that crossed the railway, down an endless leafy street, through a park and past the milk depot. A really, really long walk for a child but one that planted a desire for books within me (like a thirsty man crawling across a desert towards an oasis, I knew that there was something worthwhile at the end of my trek).

I was always deposited in the children’s library as my mother disappeared into the main section. Left to my own devices, I would usually drift towards the work of Spike Milligan and Dr Seuss. I went for humour in those days and these were my favourites. My mother would, on returning to collect me, urge me to borrow the Just William books that she’s enjoyed in her childhood. I sometimes did, and enjoyed them too. My only other earliest memories are factual books, the inevitable dinosaurs and astronomy. I remember being particularly fond of one giant textbook entitled What Makes it Go.

Taught exemplary library manners, I would present my borrowing selection to the librarian (four at any one time I recall) all neatly opened at the correct page and ready for stamping. Other library etiquette, such as keeping quiet at all times, appears to have come to me instinctively. This seemed to put me in good stead as, ten years or so later, I applied for and was accepted as a Saturday assistant in the same library. I didn’t work in the children’s library, and was instead left to deal with the pensioners and their hardback mysteries, and the Dads of schoolmates who would sometimes recognise me. It was a pretty laid back job, although I always fell down on one thing. People returning their books late were subject to fines but I always felt awkward making them pay. People penalised to savouring their books just a little bit too long? It didn’t seem fair.

These days I’m a slave to Amazon. I visit a library only rarely and I sometimes feel a pang of guilt; I should browse and I should borrow. Although I suspect I would over-borrow, take too long to read and end up being fined. I did introduce my daughter to the library in her early years and admit being put off by the shelves of DVDs that have the habit of enticing children away from books. And because of this we now tend to treat our local Waterstones as library-ish. You can’t borrow, but you sure can spend a long time hiding in a corner and reading.

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Monday August 18, 2008

If on a Summer's Holiday a Blogger

I’ve become so accustomed to not reading that I don’t even read what appears before my eyes. It’s not easy; they teach us to read as children, and for the rest of our lives we remain the slaves of all the written stuff they fling in front of us. I may have had to make some effort myself, at first, to learn not to read, but now it comes quite naturally to me. The secret is not refusing to look at the written words. On the contrary, you must look at them, intensely, until they disappear.

You are on a few days holiday break in Italy. You have taken along a copy of If on a Winer’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You think it will be fitting to read a classic of modern Italian literature. Furthermore, you decide to write a post in the style of Calvino once you get home. You like the conceit of the book, reading it as you queue to enter tourist attractions, and when your family spend time looking in the shops selling carnival masks. You like the way the text plays with the reader, reminding them that they are reading a novel and constantly tantalising you with new and unfinished stories…

But when I got home I decided not to write a post in the style of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. Eventually the book gnawed at my patience for too long. Written in 1979, Calvino’s novel is composed of a collection of openings to novels. The reader (you) stumbles from one unfinished text to another, witnessing (and reading) a detective story, a murder and several meditations on the relationship between text and reader. This is a book that fans of literary theory will get very excited about, and it’s a book that David Mitchell also got very excited about (proving the inspiration and the structure for Cloud Atlas). The problem may be me; I have a short fuse with this sort of thing. Films-within-films, plays that remind you that you are the audience, books that remind you that you are reading them. So forgive me for endulging in a post that reminds you that you are reading it (that is, of course, if you’ve bothered to get this far).

Italo Calvino: If on a Winter's Night a Traveller

You are getting to the end of your post. You realise that you don’t have much to say about If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino. You are thinking more about the other book you read on your few days holiday in Italy. You begin to shape some thoughts on your next post…

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