books – Page 65 – Fiendfully Reading

Good As You – From Prejudice to Pride by Paul Flynn

July 8, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Good As You – From Prejudice to Pride: 30 Years of Gay Britain by Paul Flynn

Good As You is a powerful, sometimes funny, and emotional account of British gay culture from the hits of the 80s and the identification of HIV to the legalisation of same sex marriage. Flynn organises this into thematic sections—music, television shows, football, reality stars, politics—with personal anecdotes to introduce each part. There are interviews with various important figures, well-known and less so, and a wealth of detail, both factual and anecdotal, which makes the book a vivid account of the good and bad of gay men and popular culture across the last thirty years.

The format means that the book could be easily dipped in and out of, and it is a light and sometimes humourous read. The different chapters will have varying appeal depending on the reader—for instance, my personal interest leans more towards music and politics—but overall every section is interesting, highlighting things like the ongoing lack of acceptance in football and the connection of reality TV and gay culture in the 2000s. Of course, the spectres of AIDS, homophobia, and mental health loom large, and Flynn on the most part does not avoid them to make a nicer portrait of an upward struggle.

The book touches on most aspects of British culture, showing how ‘Gay Britain’ has evolved and changed over the past thirty years. Due to space constraints and readability, Flynn focuses on specific examples of important moments and figures (which may leave some people disappointed that their greatest influences aren’t included), creating a book that feels a bit like a documentary series, engaging and varied. Good As You is a book that needs to exist, part-personal memoir and mostly a look at the personal and larger effects of British gay culture until the present day.

The Party by Elizabeth Day

July 6, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Privilege, obsessions, and the dark side of the high life: The Party by Elizabeth Day

The Party is a dark and clever novel about privilege, obsession, and the immovable establishment in British society. Martin Gilmour went to school and university with the rich Ben Fitzmaurice and became an accepted part of his best friend’s family, but a secret in their past and their precarious relationship in the present threatens to blow apart this friendship forever and reveal that Martin was never really a part of the world he thought he had ascended to. Day’s novel exposes hypocrisy and lies in the upper classes, but also the frailty and delusion of human relationships, as Martin and his wife Lucy recount events in the past and present.

The narrative style of The Party is gripping, jumping between time in a flashback style whilst Day carefully controls how much information is given. The plot centres around a party that Ben holds for his 40th birthday and how this causes Martin to look back at the past and consider their secrets. It is a classic structure that allows a slow reveal of the past, tense as it becomes clear that this is not a simple case of boyhood friendship continued into adulthood. Martin is painted as an outsider, someone who learnt how to fit in through his relationship with Ben, leaving him reliant on his best friend, but it is clear to outsiders that this is not as simple as Martin might claim. He is an unreliable narrator and through this Day shows his obsession and how this could teeter on the edge of revenge. The other characters are less notably presented, often because Martin does not describe them objectively, but this gives the reader a sense that a lot is being covered up or rewritten.

The Party is a timely novel, poking fun at public school and Oxbridge educated, everything handed to them on a plate politicians as well as the institutions which allows those rich enough to get away with anyway. It is also a very enjoyable read for anybody who enjoys novels about the dark side of privilege and characters who get themselves into that world, but at a price.

Quick book picks for July

July 4, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Need a holiday read? Something to settle down with outside when the sun actually shines? Or an excuse to stay in and protect yourself from the rays? Here are some of my favourite books being published in July (click on the titles for full reviews). Expect tense friendships, exposure of class differences, and eccentric tales of unusual characters.

How To Stop Time by Matt Haig – Highly anticipated new book by Matt Haig about the perils of immortality when you’re an anxious overthinker.
Watling Street by John Higgs – History, anecdotes, politics, and society are all covered in this book about the famous Roman road running across England and Wales. Endearing popular history.
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory – Like a Wes Anderson film in book form, this is the story of a family of psychics and con artists who want to restore their good name. An enchanting summer read.
The Party by Elizabeth Day – A gripping novel about the dark sides of privilege, exposing career politicians and the licences of the rich whilst telling a story of a lifelong yet unequal friendship and its secrets.
The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley – A historical novel about a journey into Peru in the nineteenth-century with an unlikely friendship at its core and a look at understanding others’ beliefs.
The Destroyers by Christopher Bollen – When old and privileged childhood friends end up together on a Greek island, their lives and relationships start to unravel. A tense and ominous literary thriller.
Hings by Chris McQueer – Provocative, hilarious, and darkly surreal short stories focused on working class Scotland, everyday life, and the mundane mixed with the downright weird. Far too enjoyable.

Hings by Chris McQueer

July 3, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Drink, drugs, and the uncanny: Hings by Chris McQueer

Hings is an adrenaline-paced collection of short stories with surreal twists and riffs on the everyday using puns, weird ideas, and ridiculous scenarios. Drones taking over a postman’s life, everyone’s knees on backwards, the korma police, and a shed with a banging techno night are just a few of the things that crop up in McQueer’s laugh-out-loud short stories. Lengths rang from a few short, sharp pages to a longer tale of a bowls rivalry told in little chunks, making Hings perfect to pick up for a laugh or two, or settle down for a binge on the dark and ridiculous fueled by drink, drugs, and the uncanny.

There are laughs from the first page and the book immediately grabs you in with a hilarious and disgusting story of Sammy deciding to try whelks for the first time. It is packed full of Scottishness, working class life, deadpan comments, and jokes about Harambe and Buzzfeed’s Scottish content. McQueer’s characters are mostly looking for ordinary things—a good time out, money, pals, get through another day at work—but the fucking weird turns up too, making Hings a witty take on everyday life if it got a bit stranger.

The comparisons with Irvine Welsh and Limmy are obvious when you read it, but McQueer is really a master of the hilarious short story, packing in twists and turns in very short spaces and making it hard not to laugh out loud (and cringe occasionally). Hings is one for anyone who likes provocative and fresh short fiction and Scottish humour, or wants to prove they’ve read more than just those Buzzfeed Scottish tweet articles.

[Note: Hings can be preordered here. Cheers 404 Ink for the proof copy!]

The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden

July 1, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Sharp historical fiction: The Book of Harlan by Bernice L. McFadden

The Book of Harlan is a detailed and sweeping historical novel that follows the story of Harlan Elliot from his parents’ courtship in Macon, Georgia to the irrevocable effects that his time in the Buchenwald concentration camp had on the rest of his life. He grows up and becomes a musician in Harlem, ending up invited with his best friend Lizard to play in Paris with their band. However, they are still in Paris when the Nazi occupation begins, and so Harlan’s story turns from rising musician to a fight for survival, and the horrifying effects even once the war is over.

McFadden uses a combination of historical fact and research, the stories of her ancestors, and imagined characters and emotion to create the vivid historical narrative spanning decades. Though Harlan is the main focus, there is a large cast of characters, and they fade in and out as they would from Harlan’s life, giving a real sense of the way people come and go, and how lives can be close or far apart. The complex depiction of Harlan’s parents and their roles in his life is a notable element, showing how familial love can be both strong and complicated. The novel is written in short, sharp chapters, allowing McFadden to jump time and give devastating moments in concise lines. Overall, this makes for a highly readable historical narrative, which is detailed but also fast paced, and captures a sense of the music that is so important especially in the first half of the novel.

This is a refreshing historical novel, written in a distinctive style and with a focus on race both in twentieth-century America and in the context of the Holocaust. McFadden shows that there are still new historical narratives to be written about a period that has been much fictionalised, ones in which the highs and the horrors are both shown, and where lesser-known history can sit alongside that which must be remembered.

Live From Cairo by Ian Bassingthwaighte

June 30, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Live From Cairo by Ian Bassingthwaighte

Live From Cairo is a gripping novel about Egypt after the revolution in 2011, told through the human consequences of one woman trying to escape Egypt on her path from Iraq to America to join her husband. The novel is about the way in which the characters – Dalia, her husband Omran, and those caught up in their story – hope and concoct a plan to try and get Dalia out of Cairo.

Despite the political realities of the book and the frequent depictions of the protesters and the army in Egypt, the novel is really focused not just upon Cairo but upon the whole situation in the Middle East and Africa and the way in which it affects individuals as people, with hope and love and friendship. Hana, the Iraqi-American UN worker tasked with dealing with Dalia’s case, has her own family trauma from previous conflict in Iraq, a reminder that the more recent conflicts are nothing new. The American lawyer fighting for Dalia, Charlie, and his Egyptian friend and colleague Aos complete the main cast of characters, all individuals from different places and backgrounds drawn together in Cairo.

The book’s style is light and straightforward; it gives a lot more weight to positive emotion and hope than despair or the harsh stories of both main and smaller characters. Live From Cairo is not a deep look at political unrest or a humanitarian crisis, but it a book about people and an enjoyable novel, all the whilst highlighting an issue that is just as prescient today as it was in 2011.

The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

June 28, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Forgotten psychological mystery from the 1950s: The Hours Before Dawn by Celia Fremlin

The Hours Before Dawn is a gripping psychological mystery originally published in 1958. This new edition of the book termed a “lost classic” is a fantastic chance to read a simple yet tense story about a woman who just wishes her baby would stop crying in the night so she could sleep. Louise is exhausted and this does not help her growing suspicions about their new lodger—suspicions that her husband does not share—or her ability to perform the role of a perfect Fifties housewife.

The mystery element of the novel follows the trope of a woman battling her own issues (in this case sleep deprivation and the pressures of being a woman, wife, and mother) whilst trying to prove that she is not becoming paranoid as a result of them. Though it was written fifty years ago, the book has a timeless kind of feel, without many time-specific details and with a general sense of the universality of a woman not being believed and struggling to deal with societal and familial pressures. In some ways, however, the novel says a lot about a woman’s position in the 1950s in particular, with comments about how different mothers view advice on raising their children for example, but it also shows that many elements do not change. Louise’s struggle to keep her house and children in order to stop the neighbours asking questions could have been written in the modern day.

This new edition has a preface talking about the reissue and a useful biographical note about Celia Fremlin that give context to the book. However, it does not need context, as it is a sharp-witted and timeless psychological story about crime, paranoia, and sleeplessness, which deserves to be discovered by new generations of readers.

How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

June 24, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Shenanigans with a near-immortal overthinker: How To Stop Time by Matt Haig

Calling a book life-affirming is an overused cliché. In How To Stop Time, Matt Haig once again creates a novel that holds up a mirror up to life and mental health issues to show a character dealing with their problems and coping with being different. He doesn’t so much affirm life as offer up a story about the freedom to live and to really feel like you are living.

Tom Hazard looks like he is a forty-one year old History teacher in a London comprehensive. Actually, he is older – a lot older – due to a rare condition that slows down aging. He was born in the sixteenth century and played lute for Shakespeare and piano amongst the Roaring Twenties, but now he is hiding from the past, trying to stop memories from catching up with him and not daring to think about having a future. For preservation, he is not allowed to fall in love. However, the past, the present, and the future have all decided that they have a date with him and Tom finds himself facing up to who he is and what he wants from his very long life.

Haig writes with a kind of honest straightforwardness that is similar to his other books, a style which brings the character’s insecurities and thoughts right to the surface and creates an emotional book. It is from Tom’s point of view and jumps between the present and his long past in a memory style. This means that much of the book is more focused on thoughts, introspection, and inaction than events occurring (perhaps Tom should’ve had a few words with Shakespeare about Hamlet). The narrative is simple and not particularly original – person alive for centuries runs into famous people, meditates on lost love, looks for others with similar longevity – but the real selling point is the way that Haig makes it more about learning to actually live life and not being fixated on the past or panicked about the future.

There are a number of particularly endearing details and characters, such as the Tahitian Omai becoming a modern surfing star who believes in living your life to the full. Haig’s descriptions of the Roaring Twenties stand out as getting across both the all-consuming feel of the period and poking slight fun at it appearing as an epitome in a similar vein to the opening of A Tale of Two Cities. The extended appearance of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with witchhunting and Shakespeare and the plague, are less exciting, but give a good base for Tom and his views of the world.

By the ending, Haig answers his promising title and shows a character learning to reclaim the chance to live his own life how he wants to, with less fear of the future or the past. The book’s messages will resonate with overthinkers and anxious individuals wanting to escape their own headspace and live, but also anybody who enjoys a character-focused tale of love, life, and history.

Gender Games by Juno Dawson

June 22, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Thinking about gender: The Gender Games by Juno Dawson

The Gender Games is part-memoir, part-manifesto, covering many aspects of how gender messes up lives and society. It follows Dawson’s personal narrative around gender as a trans woman whilst also pointing out major issues with the ways in which gender is framed and how gender affects people, from being forced into looking one way or playing with that toy to being at risk of violence or lacking vital opportunities. The varied topics discussed include the north-south divide in England, issues with PE in schools, friendships (and how they are gendered), the rise of the alt-right and other internet stances of non-acceptance, transitioning, gym culture, fairy tales, and growing up.

She tells her own story in a witty, often self-deprecating way, and uses her experiences as a teacher and as a YA fiction writer as well as her own childhood to question how children are pushed into stereotypes or pushed away from what they really want to do or be. The book is full of pop culture references and relatable British jokes like her dad calling Little Chef ‘Little Thief’. It is an accessible, enjoyable read that encourages people to question gender and examine how it can be detrimental in society. It is also an important memoir that shows experiences that many people will know very little about and which can be a life line to those who do. She points out that hers is only one example, but that is the point: a personal reflection on gender from somebody who has thought a lot about it, which will inspire others to think further.

No Good Deed by John Niven

June 21, 2017 fiendfullyreading

Kill Your Friend(’s successes and revel when they fail): No Good Deed by John Niven

No Good Deed is a satirical novel about modern day success which exposes male insecurity and friendship in the process. Alan is a food writer a comfortable upper-middle-class life and an upper-class English wife, a far cry from his Ayrshire roots and the accent he’s long since cast off. When a homeless man on the street turns out to be his old friend Craig—who dropped out of uni to become a rock star and they lost touch—Alan decides to do the good thing and help him out. However, with simmering resentment and an unequal dynamic, their friendship isn’t on the sturdiest of grounds and soon Alan’s life is thrown into ridiculous disarray.

The novel is a dark comedy about youthful friendship, adult success, class, and the modern world of success and failure. From the start, Alan’s privileged and insensitive world is highlighted through glib comments and more deep set attitudes, and it is this vein that powers No Good Deed on through its narrative, with a sense that somehow Alan also loathes himself a little bit for what he has become, but also has absolutely no desire to give up its comforts and excesses. The narrative has the predictable feel of an obvious downfall, with Niven making it clear that a simple mutually supportive friendship was never exactly what Alan and Craig had, but this suits the comedic style, a mocking look at helping out an old friend and how such a concept doesn’t really exist.

Niven places the events squarely in the modern day, with references to social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr and extended mocking of the London housing market (Alan and his wife were lucky in the nineties and then into the new millennium, allowing them an expensive house in the country in the present). Mostly these give it an up-to-date feel, though there is perhaps a bit too much comedy aimed at the easy target of hipsters and an unnecessary referencing of Trump.

I found it funnier than Niven’s earlier novel Kill Your Friends, with its continually poking fun at the lifestyles of the modern well-off middle-class being more engaging and easy to find ridiculous. In some ways it feels similar to the recent Trainspotting sequel film in that old friendships and nostalgia mix with modern technology and growing up in different ways, although Niven’s novel is less amusingly feel-good and more satirical. No Good Deed is a sharp and funny look at friendship, growing up, and the ridiculousness of wealth and class in modern society.

[Note: this is the 100th post on this blog, so thanks everyone for reading!]