2011 Book List: The April to December Verdict

It’s been so long that even I had forgotten I’d written the Springtime update on my 2011 reading list. Quite frankly I’m relieved, as I’d have been groping around to remember much about Never Let Me Go apart from loving it and Under the Volcano apart from feeling vaguely underwhelmed.

Not wanting to draw excessive attention to my minimalist approach to blogging, but I did actually draft another mid-year post in the Summer. How very spontaneous! It’s punchy title was ‘Sequels: Do you really want to know what happens next?’ – had you answered in the affirmative you would have been waiting for a very long time – and it was incited by The Rotters Club as you’ll discover below.

But first here, or 8th overall, as I like to go through the year’s reading fodder in a chronological fashion, it’s Earthly Powers. Now, I’m so glad I’ve read this book. I can’t confess to enjoying all of it and there were times when I had to motivate myself into picking it up, but it’s that classic case of once you’ve made some headway, you’re there for the long haul. While describing a book as ‘epic’ fills my mouth with bile, this is a delightfully thorough study of a writer’s life and that of his brother-in-law, who happened to be the Pope – but knowingly so, full of asides and nods to biography norms.

Chapters in Kenneth Toomey’s life play out like separate short stories of their own, especially those regarding tribes and cults, and I particularly loved Burgess’ playing with the unreliable narrator with an unreliable memory who happens to be scathing of his trade as a writer yet is also very knowing of what’s expected from memoirs. I definitely want to read more Burgess, as on the strength of this and A Clockwork Orange he has the potential to become one of my favourite British writers. Please send your Burgess recommendations my way.

Reading The Man in the High Castle, a piece of science fiction, felt exactly like watching a science fiction film. I realise this is an idiotic statement; what I mean is, my lasting memories are of images and colours, not of characters or conversations. Or even a plot as such. There was a man in a shop, a Japanese businessman, a divorced couple – lots of fleeting fragmentary scenes that all slotted together but now seems like scraps of a dream. From this blurry recollection, I don’t think I particularly enjoyed this book, although I am really keen to read more science fiction and more Philip K. Dick, especially Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? because I have no idea what it’s about, having never seen Bladerunner. There, I said it. Glad to get that off my chest.

Sequel Debate coming shortly. I loved The Rotters’ Club. I’ve recommended it to friends, lent my copy to my sister, and I’d give it (not my copy, I’d buy another one) as a gift. In fact, it’s my favourite read of 2011 along with Never Let Me Go. It is an effortless read, one that had me laughing out loud and sobbing with sadness on a train journey up to Edinburgh: high praise indeed, for I love a good emotional outburst on public transport. I am in awe of Jonathan Coe for creating such whole, fully-formed characters from a seemingly throwaway description or two. I was fascinated by Ben’s younger brother Paul, would definitely have had a crush on the opinionated Doug if I’d been at that school, and felt slightly uncomfortable throughout that the Trotter parents were noticeable by their comparable absence to the other adults.

The student magazine articles are perfectly pitched and the skillfully delivered blow at the end of part one left me reeling. In particular, I loved how Coe captures adolescence, the friendships that we form during that time in our lives and how little mistakes or events can have such lasting effects. I found it so powerful that I couldn’t shake it off once I’d finished: I was desperate to know what happens to these new friends of mine in their future. There are hints at their eventual careers and relationships but most is left acutely cloudy so the reader closes the book with a delicious hunger, all the more relishable by the fact that it will never be satisfied.

Or so I thought when I looked at the book’s description and reviews on Wikipedia in a post-Rotter comedown and discovered there is a sequel, The Closed Circle! So this is the debate, as such: do I really want to read it? Surely the beauty lies in the not knowing, on paper, what happens. Characters and situations have been thrown up in the air and deliberately left frozen.

I had a similar unbalanced reaction of desperation to get my hands on the book mixed with the urge to shut my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears when I came across The Stars in the Bright Sky, Alan Warner’s sequel to The Sopranos, that had ended at an apparent conclusion of hope, opportunity and acceptance for the gaggle of teenage girls. Can’t we just leave it at that? Do we really want to know that most of their crushes will end in defeat and it’s likely the characters will just settle down and get a bit jowly? Or, in the case of another recent read, Imperial Bedrooms, we might like to think that the teenagers from Less Than Zero have grown a pair of moral compasses and not fancy torturing unrealistically beautiful women, but seeing as Bret Easton Ellis is in charge, that would demonstrate a jaw-dropping level of naivety on our part. My point being – finally! – we want the characters to remain as they are on the last page, suspended forever as they were. Don’t we?

I had no such qualms with Passage to India, whose characters were comparatively thankless and I was more than happy to dispose of them on closing the book. However, I can see what an important book it was and still is, if anything to demonstrate how cultural closed-mindedness prevails today.

In need of a bit of variety – although Alan Partridge isn’t exactly the open-minded sort – I went for Every Ruddy Word. Even though I’ve watched some ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ episodes countless times, this is so much fun to read and a far more joyful experience than with most published scripts from a TV or radio show. I’m doing a valiant job of restraining myself from quoting anything. That would be saa-aaa-aaaad.

The Annotated Alice was interesting not only to re-visit two of my favourite childhood stories and to learn more about their creator, but also because it was printed in 1960 and the annotations are written by a pleasant American chap, so the notes are either dated or unnecessary, due to explaining a British custom or phrase which is pretty obvious to anglo-eyes. However, this gave the text the overall impression of a snapshot in time, and when combined with some genuinely interesting notes, such as the fact that Lewis Carroll created the word ‘chortled’, along with Tenniel’s illustrations, it was a worthwhile read that’s left me with a real urge to learn chess.

Something Leather is one of those books that I’ll never return to, nor will I ever wholeheartedly recommend, but I loved it purely because Alasdair Gray is such as brilliantly unpredictable and uncompromising writer. You have no other option but to step into his world every time you read one of his books. Yet amidst apparent oddness come moments of heartbreaking simplicity, like the little boy who thinks his mum Senga is going to leave him, or Tom’s parents’ silent sadness that the teenage Senga refused their son’s hand in marriage. It can’t compare to Lanark – nor should it be made to – but if you want to read interweaving tales about women, one of whom makes sculptures shaped like bums, culminating in a strange orgy, this is for you! And it wins points for the critics’ reviews on the back cover being divided into columns labelled ‘Very For’ and ‘Not Very For’, the latter referring to it as “a book that shouldn’t have happened”.

The year finished with Pale Fire. As with Earthly Pleasures, I will not deny that this was tough at times –  in fact, I found it quite a useful sleeping aid, as I’d be exhausted after reading a few pages – yet completely rewarding. Nabokov remains a hero, more so perhaps because in this book he’s created a narrator who’s more barmy than Humbert Humbert. I often don’t like reading   forewords because they ruin the plot, but I found the torrent of ideas in the ‘Introductory Essay’ very useful to get into the tone and mindset of the novel, which is, in essence, a long poem written by a recently murdered scholar followed by footnotes on said poem, which happens to be called Pale Fire, by the poet’s colleague and neighbour, who hails from a country called Zembla. Who may or may not be who he says/thinks he is. The footnotes jump around to the point that you have to keep your fingers in about 3 different pages while you’re reading so you can cross-reference things. Mary McCarthy writes in the aforementioned introduction that the poet, John Shade, decided there is ‘a web of sense in creation’, ‘not text but texture, the warp and woof of coincidence’.

The warp and woof of coincidence! If you take anything from this away from you – and if you’re still here I’ll throw in some applause  for free – I hope it’s that phrase.