THIS MONTH'S BOOK REVIEWS...THIS MONTH'S BOOK REVIEWS
James Gault reviews THE IMPOSTORS by Timothy Balding For everyone, this is a very funny book. But, if you’re an aficionado of philosophy, it’s a very, very funny book. More of philosophy later, let’s look at it just as a hilarious comic novel. The hero, the improbably named Will Power (the first signal of some deeper meaning?) is an unsuccessful aspiring actor, who signs up with a theatrical agency with a standout Unique Selling Point: it sends its thespians out to play fictional parts in the real world, not in films or plays. Normally this involves impersonating non-existent boyfriends of desperate but unattractive ladies, but Will is entrusted with the challenge of being the agency’s first official mourner. The defunct, a man he has never met, has been blessed with a very eccentric merry widow with an obsession for having fun and quoting Shakespeare. What can go right? The plot, peopled with delightfully eccentric characters firmly rooted in middle class England, belts along at a hilarious and fast pace that brought back memories of Phillip King farces, although this modern version is more intellectual and wittier than these relics from the fifties and sixties. Some may feel the characters are caricatures, ciphers constructed to fit into situations depicting the author’s metaphysical predilections, but for me that made them even funnier and more enjoyable. I particularly loved the Austrian ‘psychoanalyst’ who complained that ‘ze English’ do not ‘sink’. There’s a laugh in every line or at least in every paragraph. So much for the comic novel; what about the philosophy? Who are we? Why are we here? Does it matter? If we are pretending to be someone else, are we really that person? Or, if we are being ourselves, are we really pretending? Is philosophy merely a parlour game, or should we take it seriously. Is existentialist angst a fad? Or maybe a hobby? Was Freud a fraud? Was Sartre a swindler? Like a good philosopher, Mr Balding asks all these questions, and many others. And like a good philosopher, he doesn’t answer any. A book to make you think. Nice work! An outstanding novel and a real pleasure to read. 
Ted Bun reviews The Thirty Something Snap by Alan Helgasson
Howie is heading towards his 40th birthday. He is worried about the way so many of his male friends undergo major lifestyle changes in their thirties, The Snap. He is a failed musician, he is divorced, he now has a good job, a very good job, so the thought of him ‘Snapping’ has him worried. Then he gets a late night, well, early morning call from his ex-band mate and best friend. Peter is in hospital, Peter has burnt himself and his car is still at the place where the accident happened … A naturist resort. ‘Snap!’ The story is the classic boy discovers he actually likes girl more than just a friendship and loses her … Has a second chance at fame as a musician … A surprising and inventive story, even if it stretches your credulity, and ultimately a rewarding little light read. (It is not quite a #naturistfiction story but deals with naturism in a very mature way!) Four Stars 
James Gault reviews MILKMAN by Anna Burns
In recent years, the gleam of glittering prizes has faded for me. I used to rely on them. I always thought an Oscar award-winning film would be well worth watching until they gave the best film prize to that sentimental Hollywood claptrap ‘Titanic’. Elsewhere In these pages (link here), I have criticised the Man Booker committees for constantly choosing form over substance, for preferring innovation over entertainment, and for choosing books that were worthy without being engrossing. But, for once, the committee got it right in their choice of the 2018 Man Booker winner. ‘Milkman’ is a book that scintillates on every level. It is innovative and insightful. It is witty and woeful at the same time. The characters jump off the page and punch you in the teeth. It combines subtlety with full-on crudeness. Love and violence are skilfully entwined together in its pages. It’s a powerful political statement at the same time as an intimate exposé of deep secret feelings. And, amazingly for someone who revels in rooting out the smallest fault, I found it a book with no flaws. The story is set in the times of the ‘troubles’ in an unnamed city in Northern Ireland. (The author grew up in Belfast during the 60s and 70s). The young 18 year-old narrator is pestered by the insidious, unwanted attentions of a big wheel among the local republican activists, and has her life (‘way of’ and ‘attitude to’) turned on its head. As events unfold, we the readers are exposed to day-to-day life in this urban battlefield, to the fears, prejudices and social conventions that sustain the whole sorry system. In style, it is a stream-of-consciousness type narrative, but, as you would expect in a Man Booker winner, the author has found a unique and astounding voice, full of new ideas and techniques. She exploits to the full sentences ending in a long list of similes, repetitive descriptions, circumlocutions of the same meaning, adjectives and nouns that mean more or less the same. But in her hands the reader never tires of these lists, each item adding a new nuance, a deeper meaning, another innuendo of emotion. These lists also imbue the young narrator with a sense of wisdom, with an unexpectedly mature ability for reflection and analysis. The writing is also distinctive in the way she avoids the use of names for her characters, replacing them with labels such as ‘wee sisters’, ‘maybe boyfriend’ and ‘third brother-in-law’. This is not just conceit; it constantly reminds the reader of their roles, and it supports the whole atmosphere of secrecy, anonymity and hidden dangers endemic in Northern Ireland at that time. She uses a similar trick for similar effect with places: for example, ‘over the water’, ‘the usual place’. The author achieves a striking effect also in the way she identifies the outsiders, the ‘beyond-the pales’, as individuals while treating the conformists in this social milieu as groups – ‘the pious women’, ‘the renouncers’, ‘the neighbours’ among others. It’s a society where you deviate from the norms at your peril, even if the norms are blatantly wrong. In fact, for me the point of this book is its chilling and depressing depiction of what it was like to live in the middle of the conflict between violent war lords and intransigent authorities bent on preserving their own self-interest. Anyone who could in any way contemplate subverting the Good Friday Agreement should read this novel, and note the way this society maintains itself by abhorring the independent thinker and clinging illogically to unchallengeable clichés. Has this changed since? This novel, however, is not just a social and political history of a dark time. It is a story of people, and the stress and strains of those times in that place were perfect for producing a ripe harvest of powerful, disturbed characters for a writer of Anna Burns’ talents. You cannot help but love, hate, criticise and sympathise with the people who populate these pages. It seems that I have so far painted a dark, uncompromising picture of this novel, but in spite of the black themes and troubles characters, it is often extremely funny. The need for the characters to conceal the truth, to hide from the obvious and to pretend that things are not what they really are leads to some hilarious situations, so if you’re a lover of black humour, this is a worthwhile read. In reviewing this work, I may not be an entirely neutral observer, because of my age and origins. I grew up in a working class family in the West of Scotland in the 50s and 60s. We lived on the fringes of the society Anna Burns describes. We escaped the excesses of the violence, but we lived with the prejudices: them and us schools, throwing stones at the ‘enemy’, flute bands and orange lodges, no surrenders, ‘what school did you go to’ job interviews, mixed marriages (‘Proddie’ and ‘Fenian’) disapproved by people I had always believed would know better. The novel was a painful reminder of some of the worst aspects of my young life, and also a reminder of how lucky we were that the escalation into terror didn’t make it across the Irish Sea and up the Firth of Clyde. Thank you, Anna Burns, for not allowing me to forget. A book review can only reflect the reviewer’s reactions to the work, and these are mine. I cannot claim that everyone will find this book as perfect as I did. But if most people did not enjoy and value it, I would be disappointed and surprised. As well as the Booker award, this novel has also won the Orwell prize for Political fiction – a well deserved accolade. |
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James Gault reviews STRANGE LOYALTIES by William MacIlvanney
Let’s be clear. This is a great book, a classic of detective fiction by the father of the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre. Great plot; great characters; the full force of dark Scottish irony; philosophical, literary and mythological references oozing from every pore; tension; plot twists and a surprise ending of the highest order. So much for the eulogy. This being me, time for the critique.
First warning - don’t read this book when you’re feeling a bit down. Mr MacIlvanny’s star policeman, Jack Laidlaw, is not a feel-good character. If there were a trite superlative for ‘pessimistic’, it would be just the right word for him. He’s a man whose glass is half-empty with a hole in the bottom.
In general, the author has created solid wood characters covered with merely a veneer of nuance. He probably couldn’t help it; he was a working class West of Scotland boy ‘made good’ through state sponsored university education. The tentacles of socialism and Rabbie Burns creep deep into the Scottish psyche and no amount of effort can dislodge them. The ‘Worthy Working-class Wumman’ is well represented while the middle classes are viewed with a hint of distrust and resentment. For the most part, the ‘baddies’ are criminals on the surface but underneath we find a heart of gold. Evil is seldom a motivation. Crime is a result of deprivation leaving the perpetrators nothing to give society but needing to eat; they have no choice but to take their share anyway.
The political undertones continue in the author’s aversion to the misogynist. All his women are victims. If you’re a bit of a ‘leftie’ like me, you’ll find all your inbuilt stereotypes reinforced. If you’re a reader looking to read about characters who struggle to resolve the conflict between good and bad in their lives, you might think this book perhaps a little too ‘black and white’.
Of course, this is only my view and I am a self-confessed nit-picker. In the greater scheme of things, my criticisms are insignificant. This is a great book by a great writer.
Let’s be clear. This is a great book, a classic of detective fiction by the father of the ‘Tartan Noir’ genre. Great plot; great characters; the full force of dark Scottish irony; philosophical, literary and mythological references oozing from every pore; tension; plot twists and a surprise ending of the highest order. So much for the eulogy. This being me, time for the critique.
First warning - don’t read this book when you’re feeling a bit down. Mr MacIlvanny’s star policeman, Jack Laidlaw, is not a feel-good character. If there were a trite superlative for ‘pessimistic’, it would be just the right word for him. He’s a man whose glass is half-empty with a hole in the bottom.
In general, the author has created solid wood characters covered with merely a veneer of nuance. He probably couldn’t help it; he was a working class West of Scotland boy ‘made good’ through state sponsored university education. The tentacles of socialism and Rabbie Burns creep deep into the Scottish psyche and no amount of effort can dislodge them. The ‘Worthy Working-class Wumman’ is well represented while the middle classes are viewed with a hint of distrust and resentment. For the most part, the ‘baddies’ are criminals on the surface but underneath we find a heart of gold. Evil is seldom a motivation. Crime is a result of deprivation leaving the perpetrators nothing to give society but needing to eat; they have no choice but to take their share anyway.
The political undertones continue in the author’s aversion to the misogynist. All his women are victims. If you’re a bit of a ‘leftie’ like me, you’ll find all your inbuilt stereotypes reinforced. If you’re a reader looking to read about characters who struggle to resolve the conflict between good and bad in their lives, you might think this book perhaps a little too ‘black and white’.
Of course, this is only my view and I am a self-confessed nit-picker. In the greater scheme of things, my criticisms are insignificant. This is a great book by a great writer.
Ted Bun reviews Recipes for Gingerbread Children by Michael Beyer
A very clever book. It is easier to describe in terms of ‘Not’
It is not a children’s book
It is not an adventure story
It is not a light and fluffy fairy tale
It is not a piece of naturist fiction.
But it is all of these things at times as Grandma Gretel weaves her tales for the children that come to her cottage for cookies and stories.
This book is most certainly well written. It delivers moral judgements with all the force of the Brothers Grimm.
Five Stars and my Read of the Month
A very clever book. It is easier to describe in terms of ‘Not’
It is not a children’s book
It is not an adventure story
It is not a light and fluffy fairy tale
It is not a piece of naturist fiction.
But it is all of these things at times as Grandma Gretel weaves her tales for the children that come to her cottage for cookies and stories.
This book is most certainly well written. It delivers moral judgements with all the force of the Brothers Grimm.
Five Stars and my Read of the Month
James Gault reviews Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Who needs another review of a masterpiece by one of the greatest American novelists of all time? Surely it’s all been said before, and anyone who feels he can add something new has to have a tendency to megalomania. Well, I confess. Guilty as charged, but here goes anyway.
Steinbeck’s other great works are in the main sprawling epics, like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden. The short novella that is ‘Of Mice and Men’ is exactly the opposites of these, and for me its brevity and tightness make it the perfect short novel. Maybe the discipline of adhering to the constraints that he imposed on himself meant that he was forced to reject the superfluous, the imperfect and the inconsequential. For whatever reason, the result is faultless.
The outstanding attribute of the book is how economic the author has been in its construction. There is as much of everything as there needs to be, but no more. The settings are restricted to the areas of the farm where the farmhands hang out: the bunkhouse, the barn and the little room reserved for Crooks, the old coloured hand. It’s a claustrophobic construction ideally suited to a stage play, but Steinbeck brilliantly opens it out by bracketing the action with an opening and closing scene in the same location: the bank of the river just outside the farm. It lends itself to film, and has spanned two successful movies, in 1939 and in 1992. There is also an economy of characters, where every character has a key role in the exposition of the drama and contributes something unique to the story. This economy stretches to plot incidents; each one has a key role to play in the story.
The book doesn’t stray off into diversions from the main plot. There are no sub-plots and no authorial asides on social and political issues. It’s straight to the point, and your attention never deviates from the story. Because the author holds so tightly to the story line, everything that happens is significant, and this aids his extensive use of foreshadowing to build the hooks that keep us reading. Right from the start, Steinbeck signals that a traumatic ending is in prospect. George tells Lennie to meet him back at the river if anything goes wrong, and we immediately realise something will. The author even leaves clues as to what the disaster might be, as he recounts the story of the dead mouse and the little girl from the last town. The death of Lennie’s puppy reinforces our fears. We’re being led forward to the dramatic denouement and we can be sure it involves loss of life.
Steinbeck also uses analogies to signal what is going to happen. When Candy’s dog is put down, it may seem like a diversion from the story, but when we reach the end of the book the parallels and comparisons with the main story become apparent.
Steinbeck’s work is characterised by his two key skills – poetic descriptions of the landscape and great dialogue. The descriptions of the countryside speak for themselves. The authentic working men’s dialogue which fills this book demonstrates great insight into the way these men think. The dialogue also catches perfectly the relationships between the characters, the general admiration for Slim, the scorn and dislike for Curley, and most of all Lennie’s childlike dependence on George.
This is a very masculine story. The only female character is Curley’s wife, and she may be the only possible flaw in a perfect piece. In some ways, she is caricatured rather than characterised, and appears to be no more than a plot prop, with the same status as the mouse, the dog and the puppy. But this would be a false criticism; this is not a book about her, and the author’s depiction of her is part of the economy and focus Steinbeck uses in telling this story.
Steinbeck was a political author, and his themes reflect the concerns of the great American liberal tradition. But he is not intrusively political; he makes his case by describing what goes on, leaving readers to make up their own minds. He depicts examples of misogyny, racism, the futility of the American dream, without making overt judgements. But the main theme of the book is how society deals with those no longer able to exist within it. Is the fate experienced by Curley’s dog and Lennie the only solution? It’s a question the author poses, but doesn’t answer.
This is a very old book (first published in 1937) and a very short one, but remains immensely popular. It is so full of ideas and emotions that its full worth cannot be appreciated in a single reading. Its measure of success is not just how many people have read it, but how often.
Who needs another review of a masterpiece by one of the greatest American novelists of all time? Surely it’s all been said before, and anyone who feels he can add something new has to have a tendency to megalomania. Well, I confess. Guilty as charged, but here goes anyway.
Steinbeck’s other great works are in the main sprawling epics, like The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden. The short novella that is ‘Of Mice and Men’ is exactly the opposites of these, and for me its brevity and tightness make it the perfect short novel. Maybe the discipline of adhering to the constraints that he imposed on himself meant that he was forced to reject the superfluous, the imperfect and the inconsequential. For whatever reason, the result is faultless.
The outstanding attribute of the book is how economic the author has been in its construction. There is as much of everything as there needs to be, but no more. The settings are restricted to the areas of the farm where the farmhands hang out: the bunkhouse, the barn and the little room reserved for Crooks, the old coloured hand. It’s a claustrophobic construction ideally suited to a stage play, but Steinbeck brilliantly opens it out by bracketing the action with an opening and closing scene in the same location: the bank of the river just outside the farm. It lends itself to film, and has spanned two successful movies, in 1939 and in 1992. There is also an economy of characters, where every character has a key role in the exposition of the drama and contributes something unique to the story. This economy stretches to plot incidents; each one has a key role to play in the story.
The book doesn’t stray off into diversions from the main plot. There are no sub-plots and no authorial asides on social and political issues. It’s straight to the point, and your attention never deviates from the story. Because the author holds so tightly to the story line, everything that happens is significant, and this aids his extensive use of foreshadowing to build the hooks that keep us reading. Right from the start, Steinbeck signals that a traumatic ending is in prospect. George tells Lennie to meet him back at the river if anything goes wrong, and we immediately realise something will. The author even leaves clues as to what the disaster might be, as he recounts the story of the dead mouse and the little girl from the last town. The death of Lennie’s puppy reinforces our fears. We’re being led forward to the dramatic denouement and we can be sure it involves loss of life.
Steinbeck also uses analogies to signal what is going to happen. When Candy’s dog is put down, it may seem like a diversion from the story, but when we reach the end of the book the parallels and comparisons with the main story become apparent.
Steinbeck’s work is characterised by his two key skills – poetic descriptions of the landscape and great dialogue. The descriptions of the countryside speak for themselves. The authentic working men’s dialogue which fills this book demonstrates great insight into the way these men think. The dialogue also catches perfectly the relationships between the characters, the general admiration for Slim, the scorn and dislike for Curley, and most of all Lennie’s childlike dependence on George.
This is a very masculine story. The only female character is Curley’s wife, and she may be the only possible flaw in a perfect piece. In some ways, she is caricatured rather than characterised, and appears to be no more than a plot prop, with the same status as the mouse, the dog and the puppy. But this would be a false criticism; this is not a book about her, and the author’s depiction of her is part of the economy and focus Steinbeck uses in telling this story.
Steinbeck was a political author, and his themes reflect the concerns of the great American liberal tradition. But he is not intrusively political; he makes his case by describing what goes on, leaving readers to make up their own minds. He depicts examples of misogyny, racism, the futility of the American dream, without making overt judgements. But the main theme of the book is how society deals with those no longer able to exist within it. Is the fate experienced by Curley’s dog and Lennie the only solution? It’s a question the author poses, but doesn’t answer.
This is a very old book (first published in 1937) and a very short one, but remains immensely popular. It is so full of ideas and emotions that its full worth cannot be appreciated in a single reading. Its measure of success is not just how many people have read it, but how often.
