Tag: books

The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz

fiendfullyreading

The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz

image

The Devil and Webster is a slow burn campus novel from the perspective of a feminist scholar college president who discovers that ideals and protest are not as clear cut as she once thought. Webster College is an elite liberal arts college in New England and from its less inclusive past has transformed into a centre of free thought, inclusiveness, and protest. Its president Naomi Roth has a protesting past and when another protest sparks up on campus, she sees no reason to discourage it. However, the events that unfold question her beliefs and show that corruption can spring up anywhere and protest can be a grey area.

The novel is full of detail and is quite slow paced, but this culminates in a twist that shows how one situation can very suddenly turn into another one. Naomi’s current life is vividly painted, from her troubled relationship with her daughter Hannah – a student at Webster – to her worries about her closest friend Francine, Webster’s dean of admissions. Combined with this is an image of protest in the modern day, with social media able to spread information and misinformation in the blink of an eye. The conflict in the novel unfolds gradually and though it took a while to be sure that it was going somewhere, the ending and the way in which Naomi is caught in a seemingly futile position despite her best intentions do make it worthwhile.

From reading the acknowledgements at the end, I found out that Naomi Roth had featured in an early novel by Korelitz, but The Devil and Webster worked well as a standalone book and any mystery about Naomi’s past felt like part of the narrative. Though its pace may not appeal to everybody, it is an incisive and sometimes satirical novel about intentions, corruption, and higher education.

Before the War by Fay Weldon

fiendfullyreading

The act of writing historical irony: Before The War by Fay Weldon

image

Before The War is a historical novel set in the early twentieth century with an ironic tone and a self conscious narrator. It tells the story of Vivien Ripple, the daughter of a publisher, Sherwyn Sexton, a writer and an editor at Ripple & Co, and the events that occur after Vivien makes the unlikely suggestion that they get married. Europe tries to recover from one war and hurtles headlong into another whilst the characters find themselves entangled more messily than they imagined and the world they live in shown to be ridiculous.

Weldon writes in a humorous and metafictional style, with a narrator who skirts between exposing the act of making up details on the spot and claiming that the events are true. The narrative of the novel is farcical and not particularly original, reading like something from Waugh or Burgess perhaps, but the narratorial style provides a driving force, exposing the act of looking back at fake history from the twenty first century through direct comments to the reader and references to modern things such as Gone Girl mixed into asides. The use of hindsight and historical irony makes this a novel more about the act of writing a novel set between the world wars than one focused on a narrative in the period.

Before The War is not quite the historical novel it seems to be, but this makes it suited to readers looking for irony, self consciousness, and something akin to Evelyn Waugh writing his novels from the vantage point of the twenty first century.

Quick book picks for March

fiendfullyreading

In case you’re stuck for new books to read or want to know what’s coming out, here are my top books for March, with quick summaries and links if I’ve posted a review somewhere.

  • Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo – A moving story about hope, love, and freedom, set in Nigeria between 1985 and 2008 and charting Yejide and her husband Akin’s attempts to have children and live as the family they have imagined.
  • Little Nothing by Marisa Silver – A novel fusing fairy tale and reality that focuses on transformation and belief in the face of difference.
  • The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown – A timely historical novel about persecution and prejudice centred around Alice, the imagined sister of 17th century Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins.
  • The Lonely City by Olivia Laing – A memoir of loneliness in New York mixed with details and histories of major twentieth century artists who suffered from the same issue and how art and loneliness can connect.
  • Nasty Women by 404 Ink – A collection of essays about intersectional issues facing women in the twenty first century, often moving and funny.
  • The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel – A dark literary thriller about a seemingly privileged family and their secrets.
  • The Bomb Girls’ Secrets by Daisy Styles – A light historical novel about the social issues and personal drama of women’s war effort in WWII.

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

fiendfullyreading

A dark tangle of thorns: The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

image

The Roanoke Girls is a dark literary thriller about one family and their mysterious secrets. Lane Roanoke goes to live with her grandparents and wild cousin after her mother’s death, trading New York for the family home Roanoke in rural Kansas. There, she becomes drawn into the family’s history and the life that her mother escaped before Lane was born. It soon becomes apparent that Lane left after that summer, but when a sudden event brings her back to Roanoke, there is a lot to be faced about that summer.

Engel’s novel is tense and carefully constructed, with a classic thriller structure of telling past and present narratives concurrently. The writing style is simple yet atmospheric, drawing a vivid picture of the large and oppressive house and the nearby small town where Lane and her cousin Allegra search out amusement. Lane’s grappling with her own nature, her ability to love and hate, and her attempts to escape Roanoke and being one of the Roanoke girls make her a complexly figured and compelling character. Engel doesn’t feed the reader details, but leaves plenty of the past broadly painted and lets the horror simmer in the background, particularly in relation to the other girls in the family.

Though the plot is broadly a thriller or mystery type narrative, The Roanoke Girls is more than that, a haunting book about dark secrets and about the strange kinds of bonds that tie people together, whether good or bad. The epigraph is a quote from Lolita and The Roanoke Girls shares the darkly oppressive and shocking atmosphere of Nabokov’s novel, but with a lighter prose style and a mystery narrative. It is perfect for thriller fans, but also people who prefer something a little more complex, exposing a dark yet compelling side to human nature.

(Thanks to Hodder and Goodreads for the proof copy I won, which is also a gorgeous looking book.)

Read what you like: in honour of World Book Day 2017

fiendfullyreading

World Book Day is an important day and not only for the children’s costume opportunities (though my Little Wolf costume complete with bits of fur was impressive when I was 10). It’s a celebration of reading (check out its website for more info) marked in over 100 countries around the world and is in its 20th year. Today’s post is not only inspired by today being World Book Day, but also by a couple of tweets I saw recently by author Holly Smale (which can be seen here) that were defending letting children, teenagers, and indeed anybody, read what they want without judging or claiming it is the ‘wrong’ kind of reading, in which she defends her “teen passion for Point Horror”.

Smale’s tweets particularly struck a chord with me because I loved Point Horror (and also have an MA in Shakespeare, in fact, as she also mentions). When I was about ten or eleven, there was nothing more exciting than being allowed to put Point Horror books on my mum’s library card (I was not 12 and couldn’t have the Young Adult card needed to take them out) and then go home and settle down with one, finding out how American teenagers dealt with what mostly turned out to be fellow teenagers angered into violence and murder.

Maybe the huge number of Point Horror books that I read from the library didn’t seem to improve me in any way. They didn’t need to. I was, after all, reading for fun. There should be no requirement for reading to be anything more than fun. Actually, I was getting insights into American culture that I knew nothing about because I only watched British TV. My reading precursors to Point Horror, the Goosebumps books, were some of my only other knowledge of the US (it was clearly a spooky place).

My other reading interests weren’t unusual. I read Harry Potter and Jacqueline Wilson, Jean Ure and Darren Shan. I loved Roald Dahl’s autobiographical Boy more than any of his novels for some reason. I did read some books because they were suggested to be ‘more challenging’, enjoying Little Women because of Jo and reading Anne Fine because a teacher kept pushing me to, but I also avoided the classics with boring looking covers in favour of rereading Harry Potter for the fiftieth time. This didn’t harm me. I did, eventually, want to read harder things of my own volition, but because they looked interesting rather than because they were more like ‘proper’ books.

From Point Horror I moved onto Stephen King and Anne Rice, and later Poe and Lovecraft. Even later, and initially as part of my English degree, I developed a huge love for eighteenth century gothic novels such as Lewis’ The Monk, which is arguably just as trashy as Point Horror in some ways. Though I can chart this interest to reach more acclaimed places, I don’t need to. I don’t need to justify Point Horror. Books are entertainment. Read what you like.

Himself by Jess Kidd

fiendfullyreading

The uncanny in an Irish village: Himself by Jess Kidd

Himself is a captivating novel, a magical realist mystery set in the 1970s in an Irish village that centres around the people in the community and secrets hidden in the past. Mahony returns to the village of Mulderrig to try and uncover the truth about the teenage mother he never knew, neither the living nor the dead seem to be much use in telling him what happened. As hostile locals oppose him and strange natural forces and eccentric inhabitants prove unlikely allies, he slowly discovers the secrets of the past and violence in the present.

Kidd creates a vivid world in which the uncanny blurs with the real, where the dead might be seen but they aren’t always useful, and belief and superstition might just have something useful to say. This element makes Himself much more than a mystery novel or one about returning to a small village to uncover the secrets of the past: it is also a tale of haunting, both by people and places, and about forces at work that are larger than individuals. Mahony is a typical mysterious good-looking stranger, one from Dublin who knows about the contemporary music and fashions that haven’t made it to Mulderrig, but his ability to see the dead gives him an interesting angle. The argumentative and outrageous aging actress Mrs Cauley is the most memorable character and Mahony’s unlikely ally, but the novel has a large sweep of characters as it depicts the interconnectedness of village life.

The combination of mystery, the supernatural, and a very human past of scandal and violence make Himself a gripping and atmospheric novel, enjoyable for fans of magical realism, literary mysteries, and Iain Banks in particular.

Little Nothing

fiendfullyreading

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver

Little Nothing is a story about transformation, about a girl who is a miracle, a dwarf, and a beauty, who grows up to be many other things. A cross between The Tin Drum and a fairy tale, Silver’s novel skirts the line between reality and allegory, leaving a trail of myth in its wake. The events and characters in the book fit together like a puzzle, using the fixed narrative conventions and easy coincidence of fairy tale and legend to create a story that flows from one section to the next.

The improbability and unreality of some of the events in the book may not appeal to everyone, particularly in conjunction with the more realistic elements and depiction of harsh imprisonment. However, Little Nothing is a treat for anyone who likes retellings of and new fairy tales and myths. Though lacking in the linguistic playfulness of transformation found in authors like Jeanette Winterson in favour of a more straightforward style, the novel blends the telling and enacting of stories to create a work in which fairy tales are both invented tales and reality.

#Burgess100

fiendfullyreading

Anthony Burgess, born 100 years ago today, is most famous for writing A Clockwork Orange, the violent dystopian novel with its own teenage slang – Nadsat – and an infamous protagonist, Alex. Whilst A Clockwork Orange is a fantastic and hugely influential novel, a lot of Burgess’ prolific other work is lesser known, so for the centenary I’m picking a few of my favourites. For more info on Burgess himself and all of his work, check out the International Anthony Burgess Foundation website (or visit them in Manchester where they also have a lovely cafe).

  • A Dead Man in Deptford – I am starting with Burgess’ final completed novel and my personal favourite, his linguistically playful and endlessly delightful story about the life of Elizabethan playwright Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe. The prose revels in the scandalous life of Marlowe and creates a vivid picture of the dark world of spies, atheism and controversy in which Burgess has placed him. Also the image of Marlowe singing an ironic song about “dis-cre-tion” in the middle of a tavern will never leave you.
  • Byrne – Published even later than A Dead Man in Deptford, Byrne is the story of a Don Juan type Irish composer and his many descendants, written entirely in verse. Burgess plays around with the metres in which Byron wrote Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage as he self-consciously rewrites the former poem, making the novel a treat for Byron fans and anyone who likes ridiculous rhymes and long comic poems.
  • Earthly Powers – I stray away from Burgess’ work on my favourite writers with this pick, a fantastic novel spanning the twentieth century and following the life of a gay writer whose sister is married to the brother of the Pope. The narrative weaves through famous events and past historical figures as Burgess deals with one of his favourite topics, Catholics in crisis. Plus there’s a lot about defending literature from censorship and accusations of obscenity, to which Burgess and his infamous A Clockwork Orange had not been immune.
  • Honourable mentions to: ABBA ABBA (like A Dead Man in Deptford but about Keats dying and then Burgess writing dirty poems for the second half), Tremor of Intent (a Bond parody spy novel with a hapless main character), Burgess’ two part autobiography which is great for realising that the themes that come up in all his books were genuinely all the things he was obsessed with in life too.

Nasty Women

fiendfullyreading

Nasty Women: A Collection of Essays and Accounts On What It Is To Be a Woman in the 21st Century by 404 Ink

Nasty Women is a powerful collection of essays about being a woman in 2017 and how this intersects with a variety of other elements of identity and issues – race, class, sexuality, disability, trauma – to create a diverse and changing image of being a woman. It is about sharing experience and shows the importance of having a voice in the 21st century, at a time of political uncertainty and prejudice.

This varied collection is the kind of intersectional work that there needs to be today, with moving, sad, and often funny accounts and essays about life as a woman in some way, but with an awareness that ‘woman’ isn’t a simple term and that gender and identity is more complicated than that. The book also makes a good introduction to a range of writers in order to find out more about their work and the issues they discuss. Short and engaging essays make it a fantastic read and a call to arms to keep sharing how ideas of being a woman in some way are interconnected with a lot of other concepts and issues in the modern day.

LGBT biographies and memoirs: sharing time!

fiendfullyreading

Biographies and memoirs are an important genre, full of insights about lives or about how other people view lives. And with that grand statement without insight, I introduce this post about biographies and memoirs for LGBT history month in the UK. Today’s post is not only a post, but an invitation to share. I’m starting off with some suggestions from me and then opening up the floor for people to share their favourite LGBT biographies and memoirs so that everyone can build up a nice reading list. Or feel smug they’ve read them all, I guess.

  • Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz – I read this the other day as there’s a new edition coming out in the UK (and reviewed it on Goodreads) so thought it was a good place to start. A memoir by artist David Wojnarowicz written in various styles and documenting his troubled life and the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. A powerful, political read.
  • Prick Up Your Ears by John Lahr – Lahr’s famous biography of  playwright Joe Orton quotes from Orton’s diaries and explores the exploits and troubles of his life. It was made into a film in the 80s with a young Gary Oldman and is a great place to start for anyone interested in Orton and his life and works.
  • Byron: Life and Legend by Fiona MacCarthy – The Byron biography I recommend anyone who even makes a passing mention of him, MacCarthy’s is well researched, quotes primary material a lot, and, notable for the purposes of this list, does not shy away from talking about his interests in both men and women. And yes, she talks about the bear too.

Please share your favourites, especially those not by/about men (and mostly writers) as mine has turned out to be.