More Than Two And Less Than Four

The People Of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

The citizens of El Monte declare war on the author, who they call Saturn, so that they can live free of his continual, invasive presence. While writing about the characters, the author's girlfriend leaves him because he is absorbed in the book. She says that she doesn't want to be associated with it and he must not write about her within it. His sadness at her leaving permeates every page and a few of the female characters leave their partners, for different reasons but the leaving is the significant point. The book follows many characters and has them all linked incredibly well. The woman made of paper might be my favourite of the characters. Every act of physical intimacy between her and the men she cares for always leaves them scarred (they end up with deep paper cuts) and so she moves from man to man, never content because she knows it can't last.

I absolutely love it when the characters in a book are aware of the author and it was so well done here. It wasn't even just that they were aware of him and all we got was there side of it, we also read about his girlfriend leaving him and his bottomless sadness and how he fights back against the characters. Beautifully written.

10/10

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The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje

The bulk of the book takes place on a boat over a period of 21 days. Three young boys explore the ship and discover the peculiarities of their shipmates. It was easy to read and at parts was quite interesting but overall, I wasn't that taken with it. It didn't really grab me or make me think in any different sort of way.

6/10

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The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

We experience moments in the lives of various members of a family in India. And we see how a tragedy can pull apart something fragile. The words and all their combinations were excellent. The descriptions are so well written that it's impossible not to form elaborate images in your mind. Actually a delight to read.

9/10

Three Books and a Baby*

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

I’m not sure why I didn’t like this one as much as his other books. It must have had something to do with Brett’s character, I just don’t believe all these men would be in love with her. I can’t remember how she was described physically but her personality was just annoying. I’m honestly not sure why any of them even liked her, let alone fought over her. At least she wasn’t a submissive non-thing like the women he usually writes, there is always that.

6/10

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Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

I can’t say enough good things about the Discworld novels, I just enjoy them so much. When I read the earlier ones I thought the wizards were great and obviously The Luggage is still my favourite character and I was worried I wasn’t going to like all the stories about The Watch, but I think they might actually be my favourite ones. You’ve still got your magical characters here too. I do like the storyline about Angua (part-time werewolf) and Carrot (human/dwarf), I hope she realises that she shouldn't just leave him because she thinks he can’t handle her being a werewolf. Hopefully they show up in other ones so I can find out.

8/10

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Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez

Really enjoyed this book. For some reason when I think about it, I seem to just picture colours. It was beautifully written and at no point felt like too much. I wasn’t a fan of Florentino Ariza, his ridiculous obsession with Fermina Daza that lasted over half a century was annoying and a bit creepy. After she returned from being away for a while and she saw him, what she said to him was so harsh but wonderfully honest. I’m not entirely sure how he could’ve kept pining for her after that, I’d have been heartbroken.

"Today, when I saw you, I realised that what is between us is nothing more than an illusion."

8/10

* Baby not included.

Books Books Books

Men At Arms by Terry Pratchett

Another Discworld novel. I can’t actually get enough of them, they are so easy to read while still being worth it. Everyone is so courageous and loyal even when they don’t think it of themselves. Maybe we are all stronger than we think we are when it’s needed.

“It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

8/10

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Too Loud A Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

Describing this book seems to take away from how wonderful it is to actually read. Hantá spends his days compacting confiscated books for recycling and he does it alone, with the occasional mouse to keep him company. His work is slow because he continually tries to save books from the jaws of the press. He takes them home with him and keeps them safe until eventually the books invade every area of his living space, with the potential to bury him. He learns and lives through the books he saves and is better for it.

9/10

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The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

When you are alive you can’t be sure if you’re making the right decisions or how what you do affects other people. But when you die, it will be explained to you. I really take issue with that, it seems to me you should try to understand your life while you’re living it and not have it all dealt with afterwards. The main character, Eddie, spends his whole life as a maintenance worker at an amusement park. He thinks he has done nothing with the time that was given to him and he regrets not getting out and doing something more. But in heaven, it’s explained to him that what he did affected so many lives that eventually he makes peace with how he spent his time.

While I did cry at various points in the book and especially when Eddie got to be with the woman he loves in heaven again, that’s probably more because I will cry at the drop of a hat more than anything else. A lot of the time the wording was cheesy and it felt like it was trying too hard to be profound. It’s so easy to write about the afterlife in an unconvincing way. I’m not sure if that’s because I don’t believe in an afterlife but I still like to read/hear about what people think it’s going to involve. The book was alright but I just wasn’t as bowled over by it as I thought I was going to be.

6/10

Another 3 Books

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

You know a book is going to be gruelling when the main character is raped on the first page. The whole way through you are just praying that Celie finally gets some happiness. I was reading at work and when I got to the lines, “My heart broke. Shug love somebody else.” I just started crying right there. She’s finally doing what she wants to be doing, she’s sure her sister is coming back to her and she has someone she loves and who loves her… but then it’s taken away from her again. All is not lost though, it starts to come back again. And if you read it, don’t be reading in public because crying on the bus is only acceptable if you’re doing it silently, not happy-sobbing like some people…

10/10

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The Trick Is To Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway

This doesn’t try to sweeten depression in any way, it is honest and relentless. Joy, the main character, is trying to survive the days now that the man she loves has died but she is not doing well. All she can manage is to exist from day to day and even that is a struggle.

“No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Something keeps you going. Something always does.” 

9/10

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The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon

An interesting glimpse into Japan in the 11^th century, it is basically a diary of an important woman at that time. I liked that they all mainly communicate through poems. But I did find the book hard to get through; Sei Shonagon is just not a likeable person and I found it difficult to want to read what she was writing when she was just so awful to people ‘below’ her. There are some beautiful lines though, definitely worth a read.

6/10

3 Books

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

For some reason I was convinced I wasn’t going to like this book. But I ended up rather enjoying it. I’m sure everyone knows what it’s about but I’ll just write about it anyway.

Gatsby loves Daisy and has done for years but he didn’t get his chance to be with her before. He knew in order to get her he had to have money so he built his way up from nothing, moved closer to her and spent his time throwing extravagant parties in order to get her attention, in the hope that she would come by and their love would be rekindled. The illusion of Daisy that Gatsby has lived with is perhaps bigger than the reality of his love for Daisy herself; much like anything, your imagination is usually greater than the real thing. However, he is true to his plan and wants her to leave her husband to be with him. She knows she can’t although she most likely wants to (or did at one point). Then out of nowhere there’s an accidental death then a murder. Maybe not completely out of nowhere, I’m sure the murder was alluded to before but I was still surprised.

8/10

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Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

I love the Discworld novels so much. They are so easy to read, they’re funny and the stories are always interesting. This one involved dragons, a man re-discovering his duty and love for his city, reawakened courage, and a little bit of awkward romance. What more could you want from a book?

8/10

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Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

This is a collection of 9 short stories, all of which are concerned with the relationships between parents and their children, and the relationships between couples. Each of them, although they contained a twist of humour, were all quite sad. You have divorces, mental illness, adultery, suicides all packed into a small amount of writing. They presented a rather bleak snapshot into lives you don’t usually get to see much of because people try to hide what’s really happening.

 I’m not sure if I can pick a favourite out of the 9, actually, since they were all so great. No, I think I loved ‘How’ the most. She is unhappy in her relationship to perhaps the clingiest man ever. He reads everything she reads, listens to everything she listens to, wants to do everything she is doing. It seemed like she felt smothered by his love for her and she wants to leave him but he is ill and puts it off.

“Pace around in the kitchen and say that you are unhappy.

But I love you, he will say in his soft, bewildered way, stirring the spaghetti sauce but not you, staring into the pan as if waiting for something, a magic fish, to rise from it and say: That is always enough, why is that not always enough?”

9/10

A Play and a Book

Richard III by William Shakespeare

Now, I went into this knowing that I am not Shakespeare's biggest fan. I thought maybe that was just my reaction to reading his plays in school so I'm trying again to make sure. My problem with them is that they're tediously dramatic. However, I realise they are plays so that's the point, thereby making my problem with them pointless. But the problem still stands.

I didn't realise Richard III was such a bastard. Just killing people all over the place and making his nephews out to be legitimate so they couldn't be king, then (potentially) having them killed. Madness. I quite liked his run-ins with the women who were cursing him. In order to try and accept my problem with the plays I was reading out loud really dramatically so it made those scenes all the more amusing.

This one wasn't too bad, actually. And I learned a bit about Richard III. Learning is always fun.

5/10

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Sister by Rosamund Lupton

I definitely judged this book by it's cover; it looks like a book you'd find in Tesco, if you catch my drift. And perhaps the story was perfect for one of those books; adultery, missing sisters, sick babies, murder. However, the way the story was told was well done and the story itself was very interesting. I'm going to go all cliche here but I was definitely hooked pretty much from start to finish. I muttered often "Come on, what happens next!" which is a good sign for a book that is setting out to draw you in.

The narrator is suspicious of everyone and by about half way through I was suspicious of everyone too. You believe the pain she's in, trying to find the truth despite everyone working against her. I cried plenty while reading it and I'd probably recommend it for others to read themselves. I'm glad I ignored my first impression and read anyway.

7/10

'To The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf

There aren’t enough simple stories that focus less on dramatic storylines and more on the characters and their relationships with each other. Most of the time I much prefer the simple stories over the ones packed with action and drama, this was one of those times. Woolf manages to keep the story from falling into drudgery through her wonderful descriptions of her characters. Despite there being quite a few of them, each are developed so you have an overall sense of who they are and you can form your own opinions of them.

Her constant mentions of water really brought the story alive. Waves are like fire to me; both hypnotise and draw me in. None of it seemed forced or overreaching; it was all perfectly natural to the story.

The repetitions of “we perished, each alone” were timed perfectly. The words were more moving every time I read them until each time I saw them I had to stop reading for a minute or two to collect myself. Which seems a bit of a dramatic reaction to four words but they were so well done within the story.

Would read many times.

9/10

'Vernon God Little' by D.B.C. Pierre

I’ve never worked so hard at staying with a book before. The first third of the book I found to be deathly dull and it was just so difficult to rally the motivation needed to keep reading. But then I remembered I never ever give up on a book. Once I pick it up nothing will convince me to put it aside. And, as luck would have it, I’m glad I stuck with it because once you power through that first third then it gets less painful and more interesting. Gradually but still, it gets a bit better. There will be spoilers, just letting you know now.

The main character, Vernon, is a survivor of a school shooting carried out by his only friend. However, he’s immediately treated as a scapegoat since the shooter then shot himself after killing his classmates. The only friend of this disturbed individual? Must’ve been disturbed himself! Where was he exactly during the shooting? Ambiguous answers, must be guilty! The way the events snowball epically out of proportion leaves you seriously doubting the justice system. It’s first believed he had some hand in the shooting, then that he killed a police officer, then that he went on the run and killed almost 20 more people during that time. It all becomes the most horrendous circus with no conceivable escape for him. He ends up captured in Mexico and trailed through a ridiculous trial (Only yes or no answers! Despite the fact a yes or no answer doesn’t actually answer the sodding question, stupid lawyer) and eventually chucked onto Death Row.

Now, how the trial actually managed to go ahead without finding him innocent at the end of it mystifies me. It says they had a whole host of experts, so where was the one examining bullet trajectory and bloody spatter and gunshot residue and all that jazz? Surely they could’ve sorted it out no problem and found Vernon innocent had they focused on evidence rather than rumour and conjecture? But I’m no expert myself so perhaps they did all that and it was artfully explained without making me aware of it. And when they were out searching the Keeter lot for the gun, surely they’d have found the den? Or the shitty paper that solved the whole thing? No? Right. We’ll just gloss right over that then. And what about the bullet wounds in the officer? Traced back to the gun registered to Vernon’s Dad, were they? No mention of that either. I’d call them plotholes but maybe I was just not paying attention. So we’ll just leave those alone, I guess. I’m not gonna deal with them if the author didn’t.

While yes, he gets mercilessly dragged through the mud and he is seconds away from death I do not agree with the assertion that he is a ‘hero’. At one point in the book in order to scrounge some money together he talks a troubled child into going to the house of a known paedophile so that he can do what he wants to her for money. He tells her before they get there that it’s just touching “nothing heavy” but then after he’s got his money he’s happy to leave her so the paedophile can do what he wants. I’ve never really had the urge to throw a book at a wall before but Christ if I wasn’t tempted there. He is not a hero, I don’t care that he’s wanted for murder, nothing excuses you from that choice right there. The whole thing gets glossed over pretty quickly and is never mentioned in the book again and I’ve not seen anyone mention it in their reviews (the few I read anyway). Child abuse is a recurrent theme in the book with both the Psychologist and the teacher involved in separate instances with the same children. None of it was really fleshed out spectacularly well for my liking though so I don’t have much to say about it. Other than that I’m still disgusted by the supposed hero’s actions and for the remainder of the book I didn’t care what happened to him on an emotional level, I was purely reading just as interest as to what happened next.

I didn’t connect with or like any of the characters in the whole book, come to think of it. Vernon’s mother and her friends all seemed like gross vultures and their behaviour never really made sense. They came across as the type of people who would latch onto a tragedy and milk it for all it was worth but they make little mention of the shooting. It could be explained that they were being sensitive to Vernon but I highly doubt it considering how quick they were to throw him under a bus the second a camera was trained on them. I get that I was supposed to care about the mother figure but I just couldn’t quite get there. In fact, probably the only characters I would’ve been interested in learning more about were Ella (the girl Vernon handed to the paedophile) and the shooter himself. He was bullied for being Mexican, bullied for being gay, abused by a Psychologist and his teacher? His story would’ve been far more engaging than that of Vernon or any of the cackling hags in the town.

Vernon is continually compared with Holden Caulfield of ‘The Catcher In The Rye’ in reviews, which could go some way in explaining my intense dislike of the character as I’m not a fan of Caulfield either. Boys who go around grumbling about the state of things and making observations about the way life is aren’t prophets. I don’t get the love for either of the characters. So, they make some good observations, so do quite a lot of people really. I know we all like to think we’re special snowflakes who understand the real world and not the system we’re expected to buy into but let’s be serious, we all understand the real world we just don’t know how to exist within it without the bullshit provided by the system. Can we just all get over ourselves, thank you.

Didn’t really like it all that much but it did get a lot better as the book wore on. So I’d say stick with it if you’re finding it as tedious as I was in the first section because it does pick up.

5/10

'The Separation' by Christopher Priest

This is the first book I’ve read in the new year and so I was enthusiastic about it, hoping it would signal a year of great books to be devoured. I’m not saying that I was disappointed and I’m not saying that I’m not disappointed (wonderful grasp of English there) but I am feeling confused. I’ll get to that though, first up I should perhaps talk a little of what the book was about. It will definitely contain spoilers because I just cannot write about it without doing so. If you do read it after reading this, I can’t imagine the spoilers will really hinder your enjoyment dramatically.

Set in varying time periods (before, during, and well after World War II) the book describes an alternate history. But then, does it actually? Confusion from the off! The first character we are presented with, Stuart Gratton, is attempting to find out about a ‘Sawyer’ that was referenced by Churchill during the war and he plans on writing a book about this apparent mystery person. Sawyer is not one person, however, but in fact identical twins with essentially the same name: J.L. Sawyer. Parents and their perverse amusements in keeping twins similar reigns here but obviously it was necessary to the story in order to aid the intense confusion felt throughout. During the war, one of the twins (Jack) becomes a RAF pilot and the other (Joe) a conscientious objector working for the Red Cross. The twins both (separately) spend time with Winston Churchill and Rudolf Hess throughout the book, to different ends; one to recover important information and the other to help negotiate peace between Britain and Germany.

However, as simple (?) as that paragraph may make it seem in reality it is nothing like that. The book is an effort to read and not one you can skim through if you want to follow it properly. We’re given different strands of reality that we cannot anchor in any way to something tangible so we have to accept the stories presented for some time until they are later evidenced to be false. I’m not even really sure how to tackle any of it here and as I was reading it I became increasingly aware how horrendous it was going to be to try and review it but I shall thrash out some words anyway. We’ll start with Jack’s story as that is the most straightforward.

Jack became estranged from his brother after an intense argument about which I’m going to assume was Brigit, the woman they helped escape from Germany and who Joe married. He was interested in flying from a young age and decided to join the RAF for the war effort (despite showing no interest in politics from earlier descriptions which made me doubt that Jack was Jack, I thought perhaps it might have been Joe). A very successful pilot, he survived many raids and bombed many areas of Germany for his troubles. On his last bombing raid his plane was hit and crashed into the sea, injuring Jack but not killing him (in this reality strand). He spends time recovering and is later asked by Churchill to talk to Hess, who had landed in Scotland apparently seeking peace. He complies and comes to the conclusion that the prisoner is an imposter and not Hess himself. He also believes the Churchill he spends time with to also be an imposter. I’m having trouble remembering what else happened with Jack because Joe’s storyline is the one containing all the mind-boggling confusion. He left the war behind, anyway, and worked the rest of his days as a head of some business. Had the book just been about Jack and the events surrounding his life, I’d have liked that. It was interesting and made me look into aspects of the war I hadn’t even known about before. But that was obviously not to be.

Then we have Joe. He is staunchly against war and wishes to have no part in it (but then later he is itching to have some role and continually makes reference to feeling proud to be British). He does however work for the Red Cross and spends much of his time ferrying injured civilians to various hospitals. His story is much more engaging in that it draws you right into the heart of the Blitz and the descriptions of London at the time of the bombings is haunting and emotive. While helping as best he can, he also tries to maintain a semblance of family life with his wife but it is difficult as he is away for long stretches of time. Upon finding a RAF cap in his home he believes his wife is having an affair with his brother which he thinks to be confirmed when she tells him that Jack has been visiting from time to time. He becomes increasingly more paranoid and things aren’t helped when he suffers a concussion that leaves him experiencing lucid delusions. As time goes on he becomes more unsure as to what is reality and what is a delusion, and we get no insight into either as both reality and delusion are equally probable. The only clue we’re given is the appearance of Jack. Joe is invited to take part in the secret peace talks taking place between Germany and Britain. He is given great importance in the proceedings, with Hess and Churchill both taking an active interest in him. Peace is later decided upon and he goes home to be with his wife and newborn child. Or does he?

Joe’s delusion of playing an important role in the peace talks between Germany and Britain make sense for his character; he is feeling powerless and neglected in his own life, so it would be understandable that his unconscious outlet would involve holding a significant position in the most important event in the (alternate) history of the time. The whole way through the book I was hoping that Jack and Joe were actually the same person and that Jack (or Joe) was suffering a psychological crisis which would explain his behaviour. That, to me, would’ve been a more satisfying resolution to the various realities presented within the book but it is an easy resolution and is used frequently within fiction. The Separation was definitely more daring than that and for the most part I would say it was successful.

However, there was just too much happening in the book for me. I do like being confused by what I’ve read but it’s usually followed by a spark of understanding. With this I’m just confused. There was no resolution to anything (which is obviously fine in itself, the author doesn’t owe anything to the reader there) and the way it ended made it impossible to understand the true nature of events. I’m talking Inception levels of impossibility – did the spinning top fall or not? I dislike the “it was all a dream” trope because it robs you of the emotion and time you’ve invested in characters and what has happened to them. We’re taken along on this journey through an alternate history but then it’s realised that it was all dreamt by an unconscious, wounded man. I find that intensely frustrating because like I said, I’m robbed of my experience of what has happened.

To add further confusion, at the very start of the book, a woman presents Stuart Gratton with a series of notebooks that are filled with the writings of Jack Sawyer. This suggests he survived and would lend support to his version of events. However, another crew member on his flight that crashed into the sea states that he died. Nothing can be accepted. If nothing can be accepted then what is the point? Yes, the book has brilliant descriptions of life during the war and the characters are fleshed out expertly but if every experience is a lie and can’t be trusted then really, what is the point?

The writing was wonderful and I did enjoy reading it but I take issue with there being no acceptable reality ever present. Looking through the reviews on Goodreads the book does seem to polarise people and I can see why. Definitely read it and then maybe explain it to me because I’ve probably missed something.

7/10