When Things Go Bad (Saramago, The Live Of Things, 2012)

 Jose Saramago. The Lives of Things (2012) Saramago is a Nobel P:riz winner. I have mixed feelings about the Nobel Prize for Literature. By its very nature it tends to reward translatable literature,  which usually means literature that’s heavy on theme and thesis and light on language and style. Saramago wrote during the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. His stories are fantasies; their ambiance and tone is claustrophobic, stifling. There’s a sense of a fate that can be neither evaded nor comprehended, only endured. The “things” are both actual objects that turn on their owners, and people that have become objects, lacking the autonomy that would make them free agents..

An oddly unengaging read for the most part. I don’t know if that’s the effect of translation. I suspect that in Portuguese there are allusions, puns, verbal effects etc that add nuance, scope, and satirical point, but which would be difficult to render in English. Another book that drew me in despite its flaws, which testifies to the power of theme. ***

Esther's Gift (Karon, 2002)

 Jan Karon. Esther’s Gift. (2002) A “gift book”, really a Christmas greeting card in hard covers. Esther has decided to forgo her annual gift of orange marmalade cakes. But when she muses about the recipients, she changes her mind.

Good for Jan Karon fans, a bit sticky-sweet for everybody else I think. Recipe included. **

Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (Keillor, 2001)

Garrison Keillor. Lake Wobegon Summer 1956. (2002) Gary is 14. Puberty is messing with his brain. His sister is a sanctimonious hypocritical bully. His Daddy is happiest when he has something to complain about. Mother is kind and pragmatic. Gary has a crush on his cousin Kate, who is rebellious and has had enough of being one of the Sanctified Brethren. His Grandma and Aunt Eva, who still live on the family farm, spoil him. His best friend Leonard supplies naughty magazines. Gary’s responsibility is the lawn – watering and mowing it. And so on.

By the end of the summer, Kate is pregnant and married to her boyfriend, Gary has won a few contests with Sister, Daddy is as happily morose as ever, and Mother’s defence of Kate has shifted the power balance within the Sanctified Brethren away from sanctimonious glee at the prospect of punishment to mildly tolerant charity.

Keillor’s novel is at least semi-autobiographical. His narrative style gives us about as complete an insight into early teenhood as is possible. Most of us forget most of the effects of puberty on thinking and feeling. Gary’s narrative of his summer reminds us how utterly confusing and exhilarating this phase can be. I think Gary's confusions about sex help explain Keillor's  inappropriate behaviour  that caused a scandal and the cancellation of Prairie Home Companion. 

Well done. Recommended, if you can find a copy. ****

Conspiracies: Foucault's Pendulum (Eco, 1989)

Umberto Eco. Foucault’s Pendulum. (1989) It took me about a month to read this book. Not a page-turner, but it drew me in, and I kept returning to it. A rich mess of reality, conspiracy theories, human gullibility, back stories, esoteric lore, epigrammatic observations on anything relevant to narrative moment, paranormal (or maybe not) events, computer science, code breaking, the mysterious history of the Templars –  all this and more just kept me reading. And of course Foucault's Pendulum, swinging through its arc every 16.5 seconds.

The central conceit is that three editors, who work for a publishing house, decide to invent a new version of the Templar story, which has occupied too much of the attention of the hapless authors who are seduced into paying to publish their discoveries of the secret of the Templars, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Illuminati, and the other secret societies believed to run the machinery that we are pleased to call real life.

A rich and satisfying book. Read it. ****

Curling with the Devil (Mitchell, The Black Bonspiel of Willie McCrimmon)

 W. O. Mitchell. The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon. (1993) Mitchell’s version of a folk-tale trope: the defeat of the Devil. “Mr Cloutie”, on one of his regular visits to Shelby, Alberta, needs his curling boots repaired. Willie MacCrimmon obliges, one thing leads to another, and he’s pledged his soul if he loses a match against Mr Cloutie and his hellish rink, but gets a guaranteed slot at the Brier if he wins. Mrs Brown, wife of one of MacCrimmon’s rink, opposes curling on Sunday, and has guilted Mr Pringle, the United Church minister, into announcing the prohibition from his pulpit. That and several other obstacles must be overcome, but of course MacCrimmon’s rink wins, and they advance to the Brier. All’s well that ends well, as in any well-made fable it should.

Mitchell’s ability to puncture hypocrisy, show up the confusion of respectability with morality, and other sins makes this more than a mere entertainment. It also affirms, rightly, that curling is the true Canadian game. This edition has nicely apposite illustrations by Wesley W. Bates.

Recommended, if you can find a copy (I’m keeping mine). ****

Pym: The Sweet Dove Died (1978)

 Barbara Pym. The Sweet Dove Died. (1978) Leonora, a self-absorbed woman of a certain age, obsessive about her appearance and other people’s manners, decides that James, nephew of her long-time (and never-to-be-successful) wooer Humphrey will make a wonderful accessory. While on an antique-hunting trip for his uncle, James meets Phoebe, who seduces him despite himself, and later tries to assert property rights in him. But then James meets Ned, an even smarmier and vicious version of the self-absorbed narcissist than Leonora. In the end, James escape the clutches of both Phoebe and Ned, but Leonora decides that Humphrey will make a better dancer of sycophantic attendance.

Pym has a sharp eye for hypocrisy, self-delusion, and moral laziness. Her style is blandly descriptive, leaving it up to the reader to have both moral insight and the ability to make the moral judgments on her characters. Perhaps she also expects us to agree that these, too, are human beings, and deserve some measure of happiness despite their flaws. If so, she’s succeeded. After a couple of starts, I was drawn in. You may be too. Recommended, but Pym is an acquired taste. ***

Excellent Women (Pym, 1952)

 Barbara Pym. Excellent Women. (1952) Mildred Lathbury, daughter of a clergyman (deceased), narrates this tale of apparently uneventful lives. She’s generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing, but every now and then a throwaway remark reveals a sharp moral intelligence. She knows phonies when she sees or hears one. She has part-time work with an organization that helps impoverished gentlewomen, but we are told nothing about it.

Mildred is one of the excellent single or otherwise unencumbered women that every functioning, well-run parish depends on to do what needs to be done, because after all they don’t have much else to do, do they? Mildred’s a spinster. Her responses to the few men in her life show that it’s by choice. Everard Bone, an archeologist, is the one man who’s her equal in intellect and insight. But he’s emotionally awkward, so nothing comes of the couple of times she visits him. The Wiki article on Pym’s novels indicates that between books Mildred does in fact marry him; but as she’s background scenery in other books, we know nothing of their courtship and marriage. 

I enjoy Pym’s books. There are fierce undercurrents beneath the placid surface flow of the narrative. Every now and then, a swirl or eddy of indignation, or unwitting cruelty, or exasperation reveals that even the most humdrum lives include the usual quota of pain and suffering, most of it undeserved. This book has a good deal of this, but includes compensating (if small) pleasures and joys. Well, not so small when compared to the pain. Recommended. ****

Four ordinary people: Quartet in Atumn (Barbara Pym)

Barbara Pym. Quartet in Autumn (1977) Pym seems to be a nice lady who tells stories of nice and not so nice people of little consequence. That niceness hides a sharp and ruthless intelligence that sees and understands how people fail to live as fully as they may wish. Here, three of four single people who work together realise they may have rather more consequential ties than they have believed. The catalyst for this insight is the death by self-starvation of Marcia, one of the two women who’ve retired. Letty’s the other one. Norman and Edwin remain behind and when they retire, their department will cease to exist.

     The tone is calm and low-key. The four people’s characters emerge slowly from the apparently unimportant details of their apparently unimportant lives. Their links to the larger world threaten to break, but remain because of events they don’t and couldn’t control.

     It’s Pym’s strength that she makes you wonder and eventually care for these people who’ve worked all their lives at tasks (never described) whose importance to the company has long since been forgotten. Pym’s calm and matter-of-fact tone disguises a sharp insight into the unintentional cruelties inflicted on harmless people both by their circumstances and by each other. These are people who’ve let life pass them by. In the end, they’ve endured. That may be as close to a victory as they are capable of achieving.

     The questions is, have we, the readers, any better claim to success in our lives? Pym manages to insinuate at least the nagging ghost of that unwelcome question. 

     Recommended. ***

Remember Me (Weldon 1976)

 Fay Weldon. Remember Me (1976) Madeleine, Jarvis’s ex-wife, wants revenge. She’s obsesses about him and his new wife Lily, who is a self-centred horror. Their circle includes Philip, a doctor (somewhat of a cold fish) and Margot his wife, who once many years ago made love with Jarvis, on the coats stacked in the spare bedroom during a party when Madeleine was still married to him. That’s the setup. Weldon tells their interlaced stories with a mix of universal and character points of view. About halfway through the story, Madeleine dies in car crash, and her ghost hangs around making trouble. Eventually loose ends are nicely knotted, some poetic justice dishes appropriate retribution, loves are rekindled, and ghostly Madeleine rests in peace.

     IOW, this is a romance, but with sharp elbows. Weldon is very good at skewering moral failings, and acute in observing how people avoid painful but healing insights. An enjoyable read that raises questions that most of us need to ask about ourselves and our relationships.
     Recommended. ***

Borden Chantry, a typical Lamour Hero.

 Louis L’Amour. Borden Chantry (1977) L’Amour makes Westerns believable. He does this

by making his heroes human, often being a little obtuse, sometimes too stubborn for their own good, and several grades below super-hero skill-levels. Borden Chantry is an unwilling marshal, taking the job because a drought and poor prices forced him to suspend ranching. A dead man lies in the street. It looks like a bar fight gone wrong, and several townsfolk suggest further investigation isn’t needed. But no one knows the man, and the few clues to his former life suggest that no mere drunken brawl led to his death. So Chantry is left with a mystery. The town drunk, who may know more about the dead man, is killed, leaving his son an orphan. Chantry realizes that the killer has tried to hide his tracks and motivation. Chantry’s strong sense of duty leads him to risk his life in solving the puzzle. A nicely done short novel which would make a nice movie in the High Noon mode. A potboiler, but a very good one. ***

Dogs aren't quite human: Fifteen Dogs (Alexis 2015)

 

Andre Alexis. Fifteen Dogs. (2015) Apollo and Hermes idly discuss a puzzle: If dogs could be self-aware like humans, would they be just as miserable as humans? Apollo thinks they’ll be even more unhappy, Hermes disagrees, so of course they have to conduct an experiment. They give fifteen dogs in a veterinary clinic the gift of self-awareness (mislabelled “human intelligence” by Alexis, who commits the common error of assuming that intelligence requires some kind of sentience). The gods also grant language, which enables the dogs to disagree about the value and purpose of their new abilities. That leads to conflict, murder, banishments and self-exile, politics, and poetry, among other things.
     This story proceeds in a ruthlessly matter-of-fact way. Alexis uses his knowledge of canine psychology to extrapolate plausible behaviours, and adds a few bits of anthropomorphic personality to create something of a plot. The result is a book that I read at almost one sitting. There’s a map of Toronto to help the reader to follow the dogs’ the travels and travails. Highly recommended. ****

A woman at the end of her tether: The Fire-dwellers (M Lawrence)

 

Margaret Laurence. The Fire Dwellers (1969) We eavesdrop on Stacey MacAindra, married to a salesman, with four children, over a few weeks while she tries to cope with increasing despair. She has a brief fling with a young man in a beach house, discovers that her husband’s bullying boss is an old schoolmate, a fraud who’s reinvented himself into an empty shell. When Duncan, the younger son, nearly drowns, she realises that Mac and eldest son Ian share a laconic code that’s as expressive of their deepest emotions as her more loquacious interior monologue,. Finally, she reconnects with her husband. But she’s still afraid for her children, and has to accept that she can’t protect them from every danger, real or imagined, that looms on the horizon of her mind.
     She’s managed to endure a crisis that threatened a nervous breakdown. That’s some achievement, when you think about it. It’s also what we all have to do from time to time, and some of us don’t have the resilience to manage self-doubt, childhood baggage, fear of the future, obsessive worry, and all the other psychic perils entailed in being human. Beautifully written, a classic that I didn’t read when it first appeared. I don’t think I would have understood it back then, actually. The writing, a mix of stream-of-consciousness, first person point of view, and omniscient narrator, is superb. ****

Last Weeks of A Complex Life: "Zoltan Beck Is Dying"

 

Joseph Kertes. Last Impressions (2020) “Zoltan Beck is dying”, announces the jacket blurb. We follow Ben, the son delegated to deal with his father’s day to day problems, as he tries to make his father’s last weeks tolerable. Alternate chapters tell Zoltan’s history, first as boy under Hungary’s Nazi collaboration, then under Communist government until his escape to the West and eventually to Canada. The two strands come together in a meeting between Zoltan and his Hungarian family, a sentimental ending to what is otherwise an astringent but comic and loving account of a man who has found a way to cope with his painful memories. It’s also an account of the refugee immigrant experience, and of living with a damaged parent, both of which slowed my reading of the book. I don’t like my fragmentary memories of the war and its aftermath surfacing without warning.
     Recommended. ***

Gahan Wilson, Master of Surrealist Horror: The Cleft (1998)

 

 Gahan Wilson. The Cleft and Other Odd Tales (1998) If you know Wilson’s cartoons, you will find reading these odd tales a familiar experience. Wilson is an acquired taste. If you're a newbie, I suggest you begin with his cartoons.

     Wilson has the knack of narrating the most disturbing events so matter-of-factly that one almost accepts them as normal. A valuable gift. It’s an odd feeling to enjoy such strange, unpleasant, and disorienting fantasies. But one needs to understand evil, and to recognise its (usually merely) traces in oneself. Recommended. ***

Political Satire. It's a page-turner! (The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis)

 

Terry Fallis. The Best Laid Plans (2007) Who’da thunk a political novel could be a read-through page-turner? Well, almost, I don’t set aside enough time to read through the whole book in one sitting. I did anticipate the pleasure of taking up where I left off, which was always rewarded.
     Daniel Addison leaves political hack work when he discovers his lover in the House Leader’s office having a non-political encounter. Broken-hearted, he retreats into academe. But one last political job must be done before he can relax and enjoy teaching and research. He must find a Liberal who is willing to stand in a riding certain to be lost to one of the most popular Conservative Finance Ministers ever to wear shiny new shoes on Budget Day. He manages to find one, his landlord Angus McLintock, an engineering prof doomed to teach English For Engineers. Daniel proposes a deal: He’ll teach the course if Angus will stand for the Liberals. Assured that he will lose, Angus is happy to oblige.
     And so begins an engaging story of how McLintock wins (what else did you expect?), Addison heals his broken heart (ditto), and various other characters receive their just poetical desserts. Not quite as funny as I expected from a book winning the Stephen Leacock Award, but slyly satirical, robustly indignant, sappily romantic, unobtrusively informative, with enough witty asides to satisfy my taste for irony. It was also the 2011 winner of Canada Reads, a CBC-sponsored competition in which miscellaneous celebrities argue for their book. I’ll add my recommendation to whoever promoted this one. ****

Glossary: Riding = electoral district. Shiny new shoes = Canadian political tradition, the Finance Minister wears brand new shoes when introducing the Budget. CBC = Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Schoolmasterly Memoir: Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth

 

H. F. Ellis. Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth (1982) The second (and final) chronicle of Wentworth’s life and career, as told by himself. It’s a mildly amusing and occasionally sharply skewering satire of the naively blinkered fool, in the peculiarly English tradition of Diary of A Nobody. Several of its parts appeared in (the now defunct) Punch, a magazine that appeared as if by magic in my Grandfather’s house when I was a boy barely capable of understanding the cartoons, let alone the prose pieces.
     I enjoyed this book, but I suspect that it’s a specialised taste. Too many of the jokes depend on allusions too very English traits and attitudes, most of which were already obsolescent when this book was written. Wentworth is given a trip to the USA; it seems his experience as a maths teacher at Burgrove prep school qualify him for a lecture tour. He ends up a married man, but the causative events leading up that blessed state were recounted in the first volume, which I haven’t read. Drat! **½

Nancy Mitford Amuses

 Nancy Mitford Don’t Tell Alfred (1960) Mitford’s last novel, in which she revisits some of the characters of Love in a Cold Climate. Whitehall appoints Fanny Wincham’s husband Alfred Ambassador to France, first making him a Sir. Their children, her niece, assorted other relatives and friends, as well as a handful of French politicians, cause a variety of tangles, which Alfred and fate must unknot. Mostly fate. The result is a nicely done airport book, the kind that amuses and entertains, but requires no close attention to plot.
     The dialogue carries most of the story, which is really a long shaggy dog anecdote.  Mitford slings in some less-than-sly digs at the English and French, modern child-rearing, pop-culture, tabloids and their owners, and gormless idealism. The spice of satire enlivens what would otherwise be a rather bland dish. I enjoyed the book, not a page turner, more of a bowl of noshes to dip into. It did trigger a desire to reread Love in a Cold Climate and Cold Comfort Farm, which I’ve so far been able to resist. **½

The Christmas Train ( a re-read)

David Baldacci. The Christmas Train (2002)  I re-read this book (previously reviewed) because we had watched the Hallmark Movies adaptation. The book is both better and worse than the movie. Better in its depiction of railroading (albeit with a healthy dose of AMTRAK public relations stuff tossed in), and its handling of the storm-caused entrapment of the train.
     Worse in its characterisation. Actors can fill in the gaps in a thin script, and hint at depths that in writing must be done with throwaway lines and trifling details. There is none of that here. Tom Langdon is 2D. Everyone else is 1.5D, even Eleanor Carter, his long lost and ever after pined for love. Like Dickens, Baldacci uses defining quirks to set up his characters, but unlike Dickens, he doesn’t give us the incidental details that make these characters real enough to serve the illusion.
     The writing is often indifferently general and abstract. Baldacci is one of those writers who believes that Latinate words (like “inclemency” for “storm”) elevate the style. And he is incapable of riffing on cliches to make them not only fresh but apt.
     I kept on reading mostly because I wanted to see how the movie and book compared. The movie omits a few incidents, and cranks up the sentimentality (easily done with visuals, after all). The book could have been much better with more ruthless editing. Baldacci’s story is a typical love-romance, and the tropes of the genre must be respected. But a lot of the time it reads more like a travelogue than a novel. His attempts at ironic witticism fall flat.
     The plot hinges on Tom’s understanding that his past life was a refusal to accept reality, and Eleanor’s willingness to take him back. That requires more complex and subtle dialogue than Baldacci gave himself room for. The acknowledgements suggest that the book was “project” proposed to him, perhaps by AMTRAK. It doesn’t feel like a story he felt compelled to tell.
     Schlock, barely OK as a beach or airplane read. *

Shakespeare: a Life

      John Mortimer. Will Shakespeare (1977) Supposedly written by Jack Rice, a boy actor in Shakespeare’s troupe. Well done. It covers the “lost years” of Shakespeare’s life, and provides a plausible version of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway. I would have welcomed a longer and more detailed book, but then Mortimer would have had to invent additional narrators.
      The better you know Shakespeare’s plays, the more pleasure in the reading. There’s a convincing (at least while you read it) explanation of the “two loves” of the Sonnets. Mortimer knows theatre, his descriptions of Elizabethan theatre have the ring of truth. As do his accounts of the many ways which people scrabbled for a living in a time without social safety nets, when patronage was the best, if also riskiest, path to professional advancement, and sickness was likely to kill you without warning.
     I enjoyed the book. The cover announces that it was made into a TV series, of which I know nothing. The book is worth looking for. ***
     The TV series is available (low resolution) on Youtube.

Stories of love and grief by Maeve Binchy

    Maeve Binchy. The Return Journey (1998) Binchy’s usual mix of bittersweet near-sentimentality, and sharply observed foolishness and vice. She’s very good at showing how self-deception and fantasy are more likely to cause trouble than the intentional wickedness of others. Her morality is straightforward: cheaters get their comeuppance as often as not, and good folk often get unexpected opportunities for happiness. Respectability is no shield against grief. And the apparently small injuries and disappointments of ordinary lives are as significant as the failures of the famous and powerful. More so, if anything. For most of us lead ordinary lives. Binchy’s talent is compressing a lifetime’s meaning into a few scenes. She loves ironic twists and poetic justice.
    I like her stories. This is an early collection. In her later work, she’s more willing to look at the evil that indifference, selfishness, and folly can cause. ***