Author: Mikhail Bulgakov

Where bought: Amazon.co.uk

Why bought: I have taken a liking to Russian literature

Review:

While great satire can be some of the most funny and thought-provoking literature out there, a book that superbly highlights and cuts through current affairs can also quickly become dated.

Bulgakov’s ‘Heart of a Dog’ received the greatest accolade a politically satiric novel can earn; it was banned by the government. It was eventually published after his death, and yet despite being focussed on highlighting the ills of the Soviet Union, its political and social observations remain relevant today.

The key to this story’s longevity is the fact that it does not rely purely on its satire to be a success. All to often if I am reading a satire then I feel that the author has sacrificed something in style or content because they are focussing on their idealistic agenda.

There is no doubt that the lifeblood of ’The Heart of a Dog’ is that satirical that courses through its veins, but its animation really stems from its fantastically absurd and funny story.

The perspective weaves between characters, asking you to flirt with empathy for each of them in turn. This could be a major weakness with a lesser writer at the helm, but Bulgakov manages to wring just the right amount of emotion from every situation so that rather than allowing you to read the novel passively and wait for the author to guide your reading, you have to make judgement calls for yourself as to what reading of events you take.

It is from this that the power of the satire is drawn, as rather than merely having political ideologies thrust into your face, Bulgakov creates set-pieces that demand you to address the ideas and values that he is seeking to highlight. This separates it from merely being a clinical manifesto-like satire in which the author merely replaces the podium for page in order to speak his mind. Instead Bulgakov draws you into a much more personal satirical experience.

The continuing relevance of this novel as a satirical piece is partially down to this approach to the reader. It means that the reader’s own attitude and situation feed into the way that they read it and so it continues to be recontextualised with every individual’s approach to it.

Of course none of this would be as powerful if it were not for the excellence of the story itself. It has a beautifully understated level of dark humour that runs throughout, while its absurdity lends it an almost fairytale-like tone. This tone gives it an air throughout that it is laden with allegory, but that those levels can be dipped into as much as you desire.

Whether you choose to read it as a serious sociopolitical analysis of the Soviet regime, or a Shellyian reimagining, or as a story about a man-dog you won’t feel as if you are missing out on something, and whatever you take from it, you will not quickly forget it.

Author: Cytowic & Eagleman

Where bought: Received as a Christmas present

Why bought: (if I had bought it for myself) I’ve always wanted to find out more  about synaesthesia

Review:

I do not have synaesthesia.

I do have colour blindness. I also have somewhat of an obsession with learning things. The former somewhat impaired my enjoyment of this book but the latter may be one of the reasons why I loved it.

For those that do not already know, synaesthesia is a condition wherein a person’s senses become fused with the result that upon hearing a certain sound they may see a coloured shape before them, or they may hear a sound when looking at a certain coloured shape.

A really great popular-science book (a genre into which this probably dips a toe, maybe a whole foot even) can turn even the most mundane of subjects into one that its readers will be clamouring to hear more about. Cytowic and Eagleman have the lucky starting point that synaesthesia is already a fascinating subject. It is a testament to the condition’s possible intrigue that explanations of it or people’s stories of living with the condition regularly make it into Sunday supplement magazines. This book could easily be an extended version of one of these columns: A brief description of the nature of the condition, a touching of the surface of its biological basis and plenty of testimonial about the various weird and wacky manifestations of it. But as I said previously, there is but a small part of this book that touches into the murky waters of popular-science, and so rather than a fast-food helping of knowledge and science, Wednesday is Indigo Blue provides a banquet of interesting observations, evidence and hypotheses about synaesthesia, all without diminishing that weird and wonderful nature that makes it an exciting subject to read upon.

As I have said, I have a certain fascination with learning new things, or finding out more about things I already know, and this book managed to achieve the feat of making me want to run off to find someone to talk at for a considerable time in sentences that would no doubt all start “Did you know…” and this occurred almost every time I picked it up, however few pages at a time I read.

The success of the novel comes through the clarity of its structure and argument. It leads you calmly by the hand through each layer of complexity with the result that each new topic broached feels like enough of a development on the previous one so that at no point does the novel suffer from the inertia of boredom, but equally it is well-paced enough so that you will not find yourself suddenly needing to look back through pages having become lost. For example, towards the end of the book when the future of synaesthesia is being examined, some fairly complex aspects of neurology and neuroscience are used, but because the same concepts have been introduced as part of earlier chapters. On their own these concepts would be daunting, but because they are brought in within the safe confines of the context of understanding the basis of synaesthesia, they are more easily digested and therefore understood.

The overall tone at which the book is pitched is perfect. While there are some very complex concepts used, there are also much more basic ones, and it does not feel as if either are pushed onto you in a condescending way. The simpler ones are explained in a curt manner that would help to cement your understanding if you were unsure, and does not slow the flow of the argument and merely comes across as a confirmation of mutual understanding if you already know what is being explained. Similarly, those more weighty concepts are built up to in a way that they are merely the next obvious point to be tackled, so that a mere line of explanation of how the last concept is being built upon means a great deal of diversionary explication is avoided.

What is amazing about this book was that it illuminated aspects of synaesthesia beyond the more pop-science face that gets splashed across the pages of magazines. It is described with enough lightness so that this aspect of it is not lost totally, but the focus is more on the gravitas that there is in the underlying causes of synaesthesia and its possible impact outside the science world. One of the most interesting parts of the book comes at the end, when speculations are made as to what the future may hold in store in the study of synaesthesia, and there are genuinely remarkable hypotheses formed as to the signficance of the rest of the book in terms of our future understanding of the workings of the human mind.

It is in these final speculations that the brilliance of the novel is best shown. What it manages to achieve is a near perfect balance in the amount of knowledge that it feeds to its reader. Once you finish the final page, you will find that you have an immediate desire to read on, to read more about synaesthesia. This is not because there are gaps in explanation or theory in this book that necessitate further reading in order to fully understand the subject. Instead you just find yourself bitten by the bug of curiosity for this most interesting of conditions and will want to be able to join in the speculation as to what synaesthesia means to you.

Author: Luis Fernando Verissimo

Where Bought: Amazon.co.uk

Why Bought: The title has the word Orangutan in, simple as

Review:

This book is equal parts murder-mystery novel and study of the murder-mystery genre. Unfortunately, while this mix does provide some elements that work and make it an enjoyable read, it also holds it back from being a truly great. At points, the cleverness of this novel becomes overbearing to the extent that the light-hearted tone gives way to pretentiousness and it is the balance between these two aspects that determines where you want to read on in this novel and where you just want to give up on it.

At its heart there is a pretty good murder-mystery story, that provides that genuine thrill that comes from trying to work out what is going on before it is revealed. This part of the novel really works, and the characters involved, even though they are somewhat clichéd, all tesselate together nicely to create a world in the novel that sucks you in. The absorbing nature of the plot is crucial to the success or otherwise of the novel, as it requires you to trust it as a genuine murder-mystery novel for the aspects that common on that genre to have a real effect.

In keeping with the genre it seeks to examine, it would be unfair of me to reveal the ending, as it would ruin the reading experience for you. However, if you wish to read the novel with your perception totally unmuddied, then go and read it now. If you do not mind entering this novel with some (I promise not ruinous) preknowledge, then read on in this review, then go and read the novel.

Like a great murder-mystery novel, the ending of Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans brings in an unexpected twist. In the case of this novel, rather than being a twist in the actual plot, it is a sudden change in the method of telling the story instead.

This ending is the moment in which this novel is at its greatest. The rest of the novel suffers in places by pandering too much to the genre it is attempting to parody. The pace of the novel is slowed by the occasional scene of extended dialogue in which characters are discussing the evidence put forth, and while this is a technique that is necessary in a traditional murder-mystery novel, in this novel that feel somewhat unpolished and therefore grate a little and make the novel occasionally a bit of a plodding, boring read.

However, like any novel that tries to do something intricate plot or stylewise, sometimes it is necessary to make the reader jump through some more unpleasant hoops to make the eventual flourish work.

In this case, the final reveal was extremely effective when I read it. There have not been many novels where I have been so impressed by an act of intelligent invention on the part of the author. What the ending achieves is not only the momentary ‘ooh that’s clever’ that its act of trickery is sure to impart on you when you read it, but it also forces you to think back through the novel and reflect upon it. It forces you to make choices without forcing the choices upon you. Most tellingly, I think, is that it reverses the typical cheap, transitory pleasure that the closure of a traditional murder-mystery novel will create, and instead it leaves everything up in the air and so instead you will be left with a smile on your face as you feel yourself pulled into the action as a fellow collaboratory investigator in the novel.

While trying to put my finger on a single reason why I would recommend this novel, I have to return to my own personal preferences. While the various reasons why a novel can endear itself to me are multitudinous and mostly indescribable, there is a  single thing that a novel can do to guarantee I will hate it.

I cannot stand a novel that patronises its reader. A novel that tries to hold its readers hand through its plot with exposition or overdescription or neatly tying up every single possible loose end.

So I ended this novel with a huge smile on my face as when I closed the final page, I felt that my own intellect had been paid respect by the author, and that I had been trusted to make my own judgements and interpretations.

If you seek the same from a novel then definitely read this.

If you just want a good novel with a great twist, then you should also read this.

I hate anything by Jane Austen. I am aware that some people would consider this sacrilege, that I am a philistine for not appreciating any of her great body of work.

However, I do love The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. This is at odds with the statement I opened this entry with because Grushin’s novel is essentially an Austen period drama transported to post-communist Russia. It is concerned with domestic politics, familial and romantic relationships, sacrifices and their consequences, the clash between the individual and their culture and all the other minutiae that go into painting a picture of the life of one person amid a wider society. I understand that simplifying an Austen novel down to these soundbites is again horribly reductive, but these are the concepts at the heart of her novels, and it is the way that these various things are approached that somehow grates with me.

I suppose the biggest problem I have with accessing Austen’s novels is that they deal with all these issues from a very feminine perspective. Not only that the main protagonists tend to be female, but the themes and ideas that are broached are often done in terms of emotional turmoil and a conflict with the masculine values of society. I have struggled to identify or empathise with any of the characters Austen presents, and so find myself alienated and unmoved by plots or anything in her novels.

Despite Grushin’s novel being concerned with many similar ideas and situations as a typical Austen novel, I found myself immediately more engaged by it due to its location in a more masculine sphere and within the altogether more interesting Russian setting.

There are various other things that endear this novel to me: It is extremely well written, Grushin having a highly endearing turn-of-phrase, with the ability to bring the many mundanities of the world to life with acutely observed descriptions. Often the joy comes from passages that clearly have proved problematic in translating them from the original Russian, and so there are some descriptions that jump out as being highly original, possibly just because the shortcomings of the English language require a greater verbosity to describe something that may be more simply voiced in Russian.

As well as the quality of the writing, the various settings of the underworld of art and politics also provide a backdrop to the observations of society that are extremely interesting to explore, both being laced with drama and interest in their nature.

So the bottom line as to why you should read this novel is that whether or not you like anything by Austen, it will have something for you to enjoy. Whether it is a reinvention of that genre which you have already found joy in, or an evolution from a genre that you will suddenly see in a new light. Go read and enjoy.

Author: Juan Rulfo

Where bought: Amazon.co.uk

Why bought: Touted as a novel that influenced Marquez, and likened to a Spanish Kafka

Review:

Unfortunately, like a number of other novels I have reviewed so far, it is the indescribable intangible things about this novel that make it great. I shall endeavour to provide some kind of reasoning as to why you should read it, but once again, I merely beg you to have faith in my judgement and go and read this as it is a true literary juggernaut in the quality of its writing and the scale of the genius that has cleared poured into creating it.

The justification for being struggling to explain why this novel is worth reading is down to its most admirable aspect. More than any novel, or in fact possibly any other kind of media I have experienced, Pedro Paramo captures the sensory essence of a dreamlike state. This extends to the impossibility of conveying to another person the full amazing experience you may have just gone through upon waking up from a particularly incredible dream. No matter how hard you try, they will no doubt be left cold by your attempts to take them through the bizarre and wonderful world of your dream.

Rulfo does somehow manage to encapsulate the intangible beauty that occurs in dreams. The world within Pedro Paramo is so rich and textured that when he talks of an extreme cold, you shiver, you feel the dusty wind brushing your face and come face to face with the indefatigable Pedro Paramo. Rulfo has a real poeticity in his language that makes the words flow off the page, and makes every drawn out description of the landscape, or the night sky, a delight rather than a tedium. It is a shortcoming of some novels and novelists that they become caught up in painting elaborate word-pictures for their reader that causes the pace to slow, and the plot to stagnate. Rulfo does not suffer from such a problem, and it is down to this dreamlike state that the novel resides in.

What the novel manages to brilliantly capture is the fleeting nature of dreamed images and experiences. Rulfo will go into great detail to describe exactly the way a character walks from one place to another, and the various sensory stimuli that they encounter on the way, and you will feel yourself immersed into this micro world of his character. But just as yourself slipping fully into that world, the moment will have passed, and the action will have skipped to another plain, another house, another character. Yet each time the care that goes into describing intimately exactly what is surrounding the position you the reader find yourself in, goes to make each of these moments hugely engaging and entrancing.

The impermanence of the moments in the novel make the reading experience one that is frustrating on some level, but only in the same way that it is frustrating when you wake from a particularly enjoyable dream only to see the once clear image of it fading rapidly in your mind. It is a novel that never allows the reader a full sense of clarity, instead rousing the reader from each slumbering moment just as they think an epiphany is about to come. This may not sound like it would be a wholly pleasant experience, but the greatest novels are those that temper reader fulfillment with a challenge to them. In this case the reader gorges themselves upon aesthetics and linguistic delights, but can only grasp at a plot that runs through their fingers like the Media Luna dust.

Author: Upton Sinclair

Where bought: amazon.co.uk

Why bought: Set text on a university course

Review:

There is a shortlist of books that crop up time and again on lists of must-read classics that anyway with any kind of interest in reading and literature should have read. Dickens and Austen and Orwell inevitably are mentioned, along with a predictable set of others. Now I will admit I have not read all of the ‘classics’ of English Literature, and among those that I have read, I would say that I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. So it does pain me somewhat that there are a raft of works of great importance, or just complete genius that never grace such lists.

The Jungle ticks all the boxes for me that would warrant it going down in history as a novel of great import that deserves greater recognition that it has got.

Of course it received a certain, albeit slightly nefarious stamp of approval when it was first released, as it was highly censored when it first came out in the USA. Its depiction of the lives of Polish immigrants, and specifically their interaction with the Chicago meat packing industry was so shocking in its gritty revelatory nature, that it would cause a scandal if it was published in its uncensored form.

Any novel that becomes embroiled in politics and exposes runs the risk of becoming too focussed on the details and so loses its power purely through the loss of any impact as a novel. It is because the Jungle managed to avoid doing so completely that is its greatest asset and makes it (while not necessarily enjoyable) a highly worthwhile read.

The obvious political and social message of the novel is not explicitly stated for the most part. In the last 50 or so pages, the novel seems to go off the rails as politicians are brought in as characters in order to act as mouthpieces for political ideals. However, the majority of the novel is focussed on the human struggle of the characters that allows the significance of their lives to come through by itself.

You are introduced to the characters in the middle of a party, a dance that is laced with lashings of Orientalism in its depiction of foreign customs. The promise of their new lives in America is then inflated so that you will find yourself believing in the American Dream. The rest of the novel then becomes a rollercoaster of naivety and revelation in which the journey of the characters themselves becomes the one you the reader are lead on. You make the gradual discoveries of the truth as the characters do, and the focus of the perspective makes this slow percolation of the action and the revelations all the more powerful.

As the novel goes on it is the oscillations between hope and despair that keep an impetus to it. There are a few moments in which there is a single pinprick of joy, or the possibility of salvation for the characters that goes to make the plunge back into the gritty darkness of reality even more crushing and heartbreaking.

Sinclair’s writing makes the bleak world of the stockyards feel horribly real, painting a vivid image of the various shades of dirt that the immigrants find themselves amongst. The characters themselves all that a certain 3 dimensional quality to them, however much they are only in the background of the import of the plot. The descriptions of the goings on in the factory are not overly dressed up in metaphor or highfalutin language, the grim details are laid bare for the reader to see (and try not to picture while eating) themselves.

Sinclair’s way with words and development of character allow the gruesome details that form the backbone of the significant undercurrent of this novel to insinuate themselves into the reader. The details of life in the stockyards and the goings-on of the corporations remain shocking to a modern reader even with our own cynicism and knowledge of the reality of the evils of modern society. The hard-hitting material is brilliantly framed by Sinclair with a plot and cast of characters that only heighten the effect of more unpleasant details of his novel.

This novel is an excellently written novel that seems to evoke the full spectrum of emotions when reading it. It has significance both as a historical artefact in its history of censorship, but also its depiction of both a culture and a wider society that should never be allowed to be forgotten. For this reason it should sit proudly along other greats, but unlike many of them, it is a classic to be read and absorbed rather than merely spoken about and admired.

Go and read a Tim Moore book. Any of them. He has written plenty, but in my experience unlike many other authors who manage to churn out an impressive number of books, he does not sacrifice quality or lose the personality that lies at the heart of each of his novels.

The first that I read was ‘French Revolutions’, in which he travels by bike the entire course of the Tour de France, while others that I have read include ‘Spanish Steps’, where he follows a pilgrimage trail through the Pyrenees and ‘Do Not Pass Go’, involving visiting everywhere in London that is featured on the Monopoly board.

Moore picks and chooses these interesting premises to start with, and that is part of the success of his novels. Even if what was presented was a basic travelogue describing the daily travails throughout his journeys, there are guaranteed to be ups and downs, trials and tribulations enough to keep them interesting, and the bare bones of the novels do not disappoint, with Moore getting into various amusing and dramatic situations. But what raises all of his novels above being basic travel writing is the charm that his writing style imbues to everything that he has encountered. He manages to find real humour in the smallest things and drags emotion out of the relatively anodyne to create it as something that plucks at our empathy strings emphatically.

Whether it is the personal battle he engages in with his bicycle in ‘French Revolutions’ or the buddy-movie bond he creates with his “burro” in ‘spanish steps’, Moore has an expert eye for what will really make you care about his journey. I will admit that I often suffer from a somewhat detached reading experience, as I find it difficult to feel genuinely strong emotions for characters I am reading, however heart-wrenching the situation (yes I am made of stone), so it is a real testament to Moore’s writing that his novels are among the few where I found myself caring, and I mean properly caring what the outcome of the pages I was about to read would be.

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Where bought: Amazon.co.uk

Why bought: Found in the European bookshop in London

Review:

What you get in the first two-thirds of this novel is a fairly clinical, staid, autobiographical account of Sebastian Knight, as told by his half-brother. The way that I felt towards this part of the novel is similar to how I imagine I might feel standing in front of a great work of art.

I cannot help but marvel at the artifice, and I know that before me is a masterpiece, but at the same time I feel that I am aware that I am merely staring at the glistening surface, and that lying below are dizzying depths of genius that I will never manage to penetrate. The effect of this is that while I was happy to sit back and admire what I could see; delicately crafted observations on life and a series of interesting anecdotes; there was that nagging feeling that I was reading half the book and missing out on the true meaning.

As a result of this, more than anything else, I found myself bored. Anecdotes and observations may provoke a momentary smile, but I did not find myself gripped. I was reading on partly out of being loath to half-read any book, but mostly spurred on by that intellectually snobbish part of me wanting to rise to the challenge and decode this novel.

As the novel progresses though, and the narrator’s aversion to allowing his self to enter into the novel begins to fall away, the observational and anecdotal gives way to with a firm plot. The more conventional style leads to a greater sense of accessibility, and rather than simply admiring, I found myself actually enjoying what I was reading.

The last 100 or so pages whistle by, as the plot undergoes a transformation into something approaching a highbrow Scooby Doo mystery. This whole section is genuinely gripping and builds towards a well-pitched climactic peak.

It is only really once the final pages play themselves out that the genius of the novel as a whole reveals itself. The contrast between the inertia of the early sections and the locomotion of the ending serves to heighten the excitement in the latter.

But it was only in reflecting on the differences between the two different parts of this novel for this review that I came to a realisation. I realised that Nabokov had already predicted all the things that I was going to say, as well as various unvocalised opinions I formed as I was reading. This novel is one of those almost-too-clever-for-its-own-good novels that is as much about the act of reading it as it is what is being read.

So despite the attempts of the closing parts of the novel, my terminal emotion towards this novel is that same objective admiration that I felt after those opening pages. This time though, the masterpiece I was admiring has become an elaborate and intricate practical joke that I am the butt of. I still can’t help but marvel at what has been created, but I feel a sense of betrayal at the way I have been made to look silly. So this novel is impressive in its cleverness, but will never be a book I look back on fondly. And maybe that is exactly how Nabokov wanted me to feel about it.

(and that is probably exactly what Nabokov expected me to say about how I thought he expected me to feel.)

(and this is probably exactly what Nabokov expected me to say about how I thought he thought I would…