The Secret History

I have to start by saying that I loved The Secret History.  Donna Tartt is amazing, the book is just wonderful.  It’s the kind of book that I’m a little bit sorry I’ve read, because it means that I can’t read it for the first time ever again.  It is hands down the best book I’ve read since Blonde.  I had to hide it when I went to bed to stop myself from staying up all night reading it.  In short, I cannot sing its praises enough.  It was made even better by the fact that the blurb on the edition that I have is just awful; it made me expect a book of a lot of talking and little action.  But that’s not what Tartt delivers.  The Secret History is (to use a book review cliché) utterly gripping from the first page.

Tartt’s book tells the story of six friends: narrator Richard, Henry, Francis, twins Camilla and Charles, and Bunny, studying Greek at fictional Hampdon college in New England.  It kicks off with the group murdering Bunny, before skipping back several months to let us know how we got to this point.  Tartt uses Richard’s working class voice to give an idea of the excess and the privilege of the others; who are mostly incredibly rich.  Richard lies about his wealth to gain access to Greek classes, run by the much worshipped Julian Morrow, and in doing so steps into another, completely insular world.  The first half of the book concentrates on Richard cementing his position in the group, while Bunny’s becomes ever more precarious and the second half focuses on the fall out of the murder.  I don’t want to say any more than that.  If you want to know more, read the book.

I don’t want to give too much of the book away, so I’m finding it pretty hard to say why I like the book.  Tartt is a fantastic writer, to start with.  The relationships between the characters are utterly brilliant and even when they’re completely doing completely immoral things; it’s still easy to relate to them.  The book does, of course, raise questions of morality but this, somehow, doesn’t seem as important as the characters.  It’s as though we are dragged into the other world along with Richard.  The fact that most of the friendship group is so fantastical and excessive doesn’t really matter, either, because we see them through Richard’s eyes.  Richard is the closest thing to normal in the book; he also doesn’t have a particularly strong personality, so it’s easy to project yourself on to him. 

I’m going to leave it there.  There are more than a hundred things that I could say about the book.  Part of me worries that the reason that I loved this book so much was just that it’s about a university experience that’s so rich  and leaving home for the first time in a way that’s completely believable.  Part of me thinks that Hampdon is a real place.  But it’s not, it can’t be.  I don’t particularly want Richard’s university experience.  In essence, I don’t think that I can do The Secret History justice.  Read it.  Judge for yourself. 

I’ve now moved on to Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  

The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel is wonderful.  I think I might have mentioned that last time.  But it’s really good.  I can’t say it enough.  It makes me want to read more of Jack London’s books.  I know there are a couple more of his on The List and I’m looking forward to them.  I’ve heard odd bits and bobs about his life as well, and he sounds like he was pretty cool (apart from a touch of racism).  As a young man he was caught up in the Klondike Gold Rush before becoming just a massive socialist.  After his death, he was smeared in the press as an alcoholic womaniser. 

The Iron Heel is a book in the form of a manuscript written by Avis Everhard and unearthed seven hundred years later.  The story itself features both Avis’s writing and footnotes which are alternatively amusing and depressing, written by the manuscript’s editor, scholar Anthony Meredith and follows the tale of Avis and her husband, Ernest from the time they meet to their launching of a doomed socialist revolution against the capitalist Oligarchy, dubbed the Iron Heel.   It’s a pretty standard tale of young love, really.  It’s wonderful.  The book’s filled with arguments for socialism that Ernest makes against the ruling classes, most of which would still stand up today.  London’s passion for social reform drips through the book and even when it strays into socio-political lecture territory, it stays interesting. 

One of the most interesting things about the book is London’s ideas for his alternative timeline.  The book was written in 1908 and features a history containing both bits that are wildly inaccurate and the bits that cut a bit too close to the truth.  The First Revolt takes place in spring 1918, just a few months after the actual Russian Revolution and the idea of massive corporate trusts building up and taking a stranglehold on commercial markets leading to small businesses becoming bankrupt certainly isn’t fiction.  Less close to truth, Europe becomes socialist very early on.  The whole thing’s a bit too optimistic about the role of socialism, actually.  London followed Karl Marx’s view that capitalism was unsustainable and bases his version of the 20^th Century on that.  London didn’t seem to understand that capitalism will always find a way.

Another of the things that I loved about the book is that over its cause it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  The Everhards understand that no revolution can occur without bloodshed but throughout the book they get more morally dubious.  They are just as willing to execute deserters, opponents, and those that they consider as disloyal as the Iron Heel are.  There is one incident when their hide out is chanced upon by firm Oligarchy member Philip Wickson.  Unable to execute him without revealing themselves, the group convert him to their way of thinking and turn him into a spy.

I loved this book.  Even though we know from the beginning that everything is doomed, it’s almost impossible not to get caught up in the revolutionary rhetoric of the Everhards.  Their enthusiasm for change and for social improvement is infectious.  Despite the fact that Meredith tells us both Everhards were executed, there is a tremendous feeling of hope running through the novel.  Only some of this can be attached to the Everhards.  Meredith writes at a time, centuries in the future, when the Iron Heel has been overthrown.  Even if the Everhards never see it, the book leaves us in the knowledge that they started something; something which would continue for generations.  We’re left knowing that there will be a day when the Iron Heel falls.

 

I’m now moving on to The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

Siddhartha

I’m still not sure that I fully understand Siddhartha.  It’s all about Buddhism and Hinduism and finding the right path to enlightenment; that much I get.  But it’s one of those books that make me feel that a little prior knowledge of the subject would have improved my enjoyment of it no end. 

Hermann Hesse wrote this in 1922 and it amazes me that someone from a Western background really got Indian culture back then.  It might sound naïve, but I’m so used to books of the period telling the story of colonisation from the colonisers’ point-of-view. So it is refreshing to read someone who clearly bothered to study and understand another culture rather than attempting to impose his own on the natives.  The book doesn’t actually deal with colonisation at all; it’s fully about Indian culture, unaffected by the West.

The tale is ostensibly, a simple one; Siddhartha and his best mate Govinda leave home on a spiritual quest.  After spending some quality forest time with the super strict samanas, it becomes clear that the pair disagree on how best to reach nirvana, as a result Siddhartha leaves to re-join society.  Over the years he becomes a rich and comfortable merchant with an almost functional relationship with a courtesan, Kamala.  Again he decides this is not the life for him, abandons his wealth and the (now pregnant) Kamala to return to poverty and true peace.  He runs into Govinda a couple of times along the way who as a monk is as unchanging as Siddhartha is fickle.  Govinda is chronically unable to recognise his old friend and the two have banter about philosophy and enlightenment. 

I feel that my summary of the novel is somewhat incomplete.  As I mentioned previously, there is a lot in here about Buddhism and Hinduism that I’m just slightly ignorant of.  Unfortunately, my school’s idea of religious education was Christianity with a disclaimer that there are other religions available.  What I do know is that Siddhartha was the original name of the Buddha and that he too left home young, renouncing his not inconsiderable wealth, to follow the samanas.  I remember reading somewhere that at one point he trained his body to be able to survive on one grain of rice a day; fictional Siddhartha never quite manages this, but he does learn the power of starvation.  I’m sure that the religious arguments each of the characters make are equally grounded in proper religion, but I don’t know which school of thought comes from where.  And I’m sure that knowing these things, while not essential to my understanding, did impact upon my enjoyment of Hesse’s book.

Siddhartha is a good book.  It’s wonderfully advanced in its attitude for its time, and that alone makes me want to read more Hesse.  The story is alright, if predictable.  It’s the religion that must, for some, make this book.  It’s a shame that I don’t know more as that became a barrier to engaging with the various religious arguments and in turn the book itself.  I know the basics of Buddhism: the wheel and the reincarnations, and nirvana.  I don’t know the ins and outs of the best path to enlightenment.  I wasn’t even really aware that it was a thing that could be disagreed upon (it seems like a rather un-enlightened thing to do) and my view of the novel suffered for it. 

My next read is the marvellous The Iron Heel by Jack London.  Spoiler: it’s marvellous.

Gabriel's Gift

I loved Gabriel’s Gift. That needs to be said first of all. I know I wasn’t that impressed by Intimacy, but Hanif Kureishi is back on form with this book. I don’t think I’ve ever, as an adult, read an author who writes teenaged characters so well. It’s true of Karim Amir in The Buddha of Suburbia and it’s certainly true of Gabriel Bunch.

Gabriel’s Gift is the story of the Bunch family; recently separated parents Christine and Rex, au pair Hannah and 15 year-old twins Gabriel and Archie. Archie did die when he was two, but he’s still pretty chatty with Gabriel. Rex is a musician who almost made it big playing with rock superstar Lester Jones years before the story begins and has never really been able to let go of his glory days as bassist for the Leather Pigs. When Gabriel and Rex visit Lester, he is intrigued by Gabriel’s artistic talent and gifts him a painting. This leads to both of Gabriel’s parents attempting to take the painting from him and sell it. There’s not much of a main drama, it’s essentially Gabriel encouraging Rex to get his shit together, while trying to get back a (forged) copy of his painting that his father sold. It doesn’t need to have any more plot than that, it’s short and it’s funny and that’s enough to make it a really enjoyable read.

Part of the reason that this book is so good is Kureishi’s skill at writing teenagers. Gabriel is easily the most likeable character in the book, which isn’t hard as his parents are useless. But he’s still clearly teenager. Sometimes, when adults try and make teens likeable, they make them too grown up- just little adults and Kureishi doesn’t do that. Gabriel is still, at times, petulant and immature. He is more than a little xenophobic towards Soviet born Hannah, referring to her home town as “Bronchitis.” Yes, his parents are far more immature- his father is a hopelessly impractical dreamer who finds it difficult to cope with his son’s talents. Gabriel’s mother is, quite frankly, a lush. So Gabriel becomes the voice of sanity while retaining his youthful tone. I know when I read The Buddha of Suburbia I compared it to the early Adrian Mole books, and this is the same. I’m so impressed at how Kureishi utterly nails it again.

The only elements of the novel that don’t seem necessary are Gabriel’s other gifts. Early in the book he seems to draw a chair which then materialises. It quickly disappears and, other than as a reason for Gabriel to lay off the weed, it is not mentioned again. It’s an interesting bit to read, but it doesn’t entirely fit in or make sense in the context of the rest of the novel. Gabriel also spends a lot of time talking to Archie. Archie does talk back, and while it’s implied that this is actually Archie, I don’t believe it. Considering the rest of the book the idea that this is just Gabriel talking to himself and wanting to hear a response is far more likely. It’s a device that simply needs more exploring to be properly intriguing. There’s also a mini-cameo by The Buddha of Suburbia protagonist Karim Amir which adds nothing and is a little jarring, but that’s only 200 or so words long, so I can forgive Kureishi that.

It’s a difficult thing to write about people who are selfish and petty and make them likeable; neither Christine nor Rex should be any fun to read about, but they are. It doesn’t matter that for most of the book they are both being terrible parents but they stay funny. Gabriel is the same. Even when he’s acting like a teenager, Kueishi makes him enjoyable to read about.

Next up is a trip to the Buddha of Buddhism in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.

Fathers and Sons

It’s been a while since I tackled any Russian literature, other than Gogol’s super short The Nose.  I love the stuff; I just haven’t been in the mood for it.  I have to be in a certain mindset to cope with the gravity and philosophising that crops up in all the Russian literature I’ve had experiences with.  It might not be in all of it, there may be some light-hearted modern Russian culture (if the memes are to be believed, Putin clearly has a sense of humour), but it’s not so much in the classics.  Dostoyevsky wasn’t really one for a pun.

Anyway, finally being in the mood for misery and the philosophy of ethics, I embarked up Fathers and Sons.  It’s not bad either.  Essentially, it tells the story of a son Akardy who has recently graduated from university and his visit to his father Nikolai and uncle Pavel, and various other visits the pair make .  Arkady brings with him his friend Evgeny Vasilev Bazarov nihilist and buzzkill extraordinaire.  The book focuses on the difference in morals and beliefs between the two generations, while featuring quite a lot of Bazarov going around and spoiling everyone’s fun.  He’s spoilt and worshipped by his parents and is unfathomably ungrateful to them.  At one point he and Pavel have a duel simply because they hate one another.  He’s fairly awful to Arkady, who hero-worships him. And yet, despite all this, he’s oddly likeable.  Or at least good to read about.

It’s tricky to say why I enjoyed this book.  The plot is fairly simple, and the ending inevitable; and the philosophy isn’t what appealed to me.  I did enjoy the difference between the generations.  Nikolai and Pavel discuss an argument with their mother when they were young, Nikolai explaining to her that she could never understand his position as they were simply of different generations and she needed to make way for the young.  Naturally, these two are less than happy to make way for the young when they are the elder generation.  Of course, this is problematic when it becomes clear that Bazrov’s way is deeply flawed to the extent that even Arkady grows sick of it and turns back to something that more closely resembles his father’s morality. 

Fathers and Sons is also a fascinatingly important book.  It’s widely regarded as being responsible for popularising the term “nihilism” long before The Big Lebowski.  It was also one of the first Russian novels to become properly popular in the Western world.  It’s not hard to see why this book did travel; it provides a quick and easy to understand tale of what was going on in Russian culture and politics at the time of the novel and over the thirty or so years prior to its publication.  Without this book, there may have not been an audience for what came after- this would mean no Anna Karenina, no Crime and Punishment.  The influence of Ivan Turgenov is too far reaching to measure.

So that’s Fathers and Sons: important and entertaining.  I’m still not entirely sure why I like it.  All the bits I marked to look back at so I could write this just seem to involve Bazarov being a jerk to various characters.  It’s humourless jerkery too.  It really shouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable as I found it. 

I’m now back to Hanif Kureishi and more parent-child relationships with Gabriel’s Gift.

A Maggot

John Fowles seems bound to disappoint me.  I had such high hopes for The French Lieutenant’s Woman when I read it- it starts so well.  But, it rapidly went downhill and I ended up not really enjoying it.  Despite this, I had high hopes for A Maggot.  It’s written in a cool style (that’s the technical term), with transcribed interviews, letters, and cuttings from a period magazine.  To clarify, that’s a magazine contemporary to the time the book is set in.  And yet… I couldn’t get into it.  Some parts were great (and I’ll come to those) but I just felt let down by the book as a whole.

A Maggot tells the story of the disappearance of Mr Bartholomew and possible death.  Keen to find his son, the mysterious Duke gets involved and an investigation begins.  This largely involves a lawyer interviewing everyone who can still be tracked down.  Bartholomew forms a travelling party, telling each member a different story to explain his travelling to Devon.  While there, he takes his servant Dick Thurlow and a prostitute he has hired for the journey Rebecca Lee into a cave.  Versions of what happens in this cave vary wildly, despite the fact that Rebecca is the only one able to tell the tale.  Consequentially, what starts as a fairly routine whodunit soon descends into women being raped by Satan, or possibly aliens and time travel.  It veers a bit off course at the end.  There’s also quite a lot about Quakerism and Shakerism.  To be honest, I’d never heard of Shakerism before and these themes don’t really add to the story.

I think this book disappointed me as it tries too hard to be complex as a narrative, but retains the idea of a very simplistic morality (at least for its female character).  I quite liked the Satan explanation.  This may well be personal preference speaking, but in fiction I’ll take the supernatural over aliens any day of the week.  We know, when Rebecca gives her testimony that she is pregnant and the idea that the child she is carrying could be Satan’s is far more interesting than the actual explanation (a convoluted tale about it being Dick Thurlow’s).  I feel like such a hypocrite, but it’s a shame that the Satan-baby isn’t the actual truth, especially as I get annoyed at the fact that her testimony about the aliens is seen by the male lawyer as less believable that a man’s story of Satan despite the fact that the man wasn’t even there.  I know the book is set in, like, 1736 and these are probably fairly accurate attitudes of the time, but still.  It’s even more annoying as Rebecca is a character of polarised morality.  When she is a whore, she is the lowest of the low, but once she returns to Quakerism, she is sickeningly pious.  It seems that there is very little ambiguity around her morality.  The only reasons she is disbelieved are her gender and her religion.  She is unquestionably moral by the end.  And people, even the very religious, aren’t actually like that.

So there we have it; A Maggot.  A disappointment.  I still hope one day to read a book by Fowles and actually enjoy it all the way to the end.  Truthfully, though, I don’t see that happening for some time.  Maybe I’ll give him a break before I pick up The Magus.  I feel like I say this about a lot of books, but A Maggot would have been so much better if the sexism had been less prevalent and had the aliens not gotten involved.

After a fairly lengthy break from it, I’ve moved back to Russian literature.  It’s now the turn of Ivan Turgenov’s Fathers and Sons.