Every year in the Man Booker longlist we get our token book on masculinity. Ian McGuire’s The North Water (2016) is this year’s meditation. It left meEvery year in the Man Booker longlist we get our token book on masculinity. Ian McGuire’s The North Water (2016) is this year’s meditation. It left me asking the question, in a post Moby-Dick world, is there really any place for whaling novels?
Henry Drax has a penchant for murder, he joins the Volunteer expedition to the North Water in hopes of getting away from himself for a couple months. Patrick Sumner, an Irish-man who is two shillelaghs away from King Brian in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, is also on-board. He’s a surgeon who was wounded in the siege of Delhi. As the ship takes off on its voyage strange things begin happening. Someone is murdering people on the ship. I wonder who could be the cause?
The North Water is a tired tale. After it gets bored with being Moby-Dick it decides to try and become The Revenant with equally disastrous results. Whilst the overall plot was weak I have to admit that I did enjoy some passages of this novel. McGuire is able to save himself from his plot by employing wholly readable but violent prose. This novel does not swiftly pan to the doorway as the ear is being cut off. I hate using this word but The North Water is gritty. McGuire effectively puts you on the Volunteer and you can taste the sour salt water in the air.
However, The North Water cannot light a flare and be rescued by prose. The only thoughts I had throughout this novel were about how much I want to reread Moby-Dick. And that’s what I suggest you do as well. The North Water is never good but it middles its way along a plot that might have been interesting two-hundred years ago. It’s a Moby-Dud....more
I looked at the cover of Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk (2016) and thought, oh great a popular fiction novel has made its way into the Man Booker longlist. AI looked at the cover of Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk (2016) and thought, oh great a popular fiction novel has made its way into the Man Booker longlist. A big blue sea, a woman lounging in a bikini, did the cover designer even read this novel?
Rose is paralysed. Or at least she thinks she is. Her daughter and narrator, Sofia, has brought her out to the south of Spain in order to attend the Gomez clinic. However, the clinic may be as fraudulent as Rose’s sudden paraplegia. Sofia writes about her mother’s penchant for hypochondria but yet she plays along and obeys. She has even put her PhD on hold in order to appease her mother’s ‘illness’. Hot Milk is a strange novel. The prose is dream-like but compulsive. It’s hard to put down this wandering novel.
There is a moment in this novel where Sofia decides to set a dog free. Now, if this happened in any other novel it would have been an automatic one-star did-not-finish. It’s such a trite bit of narrative that’s used to portray a character as carefree and whimsical. But it works in Hot Milk. Sofia is a woman who can’t tell the difference between the words ‘beloved’ and ‘beheaded’, they look the same to her. She is constantly plagued by jellyfish (called medusas in Spanish) and she admires the welts they give her on her legs. Of course she sets a dog free. She is an aimless narrator. She weaves you along this novel in hopes that you’re taking the lead.
Hot Milk is never a dull novel. I found myself liking this novel more and more as I read on. I went in reluctant and it completely took me off guard. The novel culminates in its final chapters, which are so wonderfully fitting and perfect that I struggle to even think of a more satisfying ending in any recent reads. I feel Hot Milk is either going to be a novel that you get or you just don’t. It’s packaged as a beach read but in many ways it is the anti-beach read. Never has the sunny south of Spain felt so dark....more
On the back of my disappointment with Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You I went to Twitter and meditated on the state of the gay novel. My friend COn the back of my disappointment with Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You I went to Twitter and meditated on the state of the gay novel. My friend Conrad said I should try out Edmund White. So I did.
A Boy’s Own Story (1982) is a novel about a gay teen’s coming of age in 1950s America. White holds nothing back. Within the first 20 pages we are already reading about our narrator’s rendezvous with a younger boy, Kevin. Kevin is 12 and our narrator is 15 but Kevin already knows the ropes when it comes to ‘cornholing’. These first couple of pages act as an admonition to the reader, you can hear White tapping at his keys, ‘I am not going to hold back’. The unabashed portrayal of teenage sexuality is so wonderfully refreshing. This novel is far more than just sex however.
Our narrator faces genuine struggles. Throughout the novel he chastises himself for being homosexual. At times he wishes he wasn’t. His father sends him to boarding school in order to straighten him out (pun intended). His life is a series of unfulfilling encounters and perpetual self-hate. The novel rejects the conventional bildungsroman narrative. We jump around the narrator’s life because that seems to be the only thing that he’s able to control, us. In her original review for the NYT, Catherine Stimpson described A Boy’s Own Life as The Catcher in the Rye meets Wilde’s De Profundis. It’s a fair comparison but White recedes into depths that Salinger could only dream about.
While I will admit that the novel can get boring in some parts I overall really admired A Boy’s Own Life. It acts as a reminder to me that for every middling book you read there’s always a great one to counteract it. I will most definitely be continuing on with Edmund White’s oeuvre....more
I continued with the Man Booker longlist with my first Elizabeth Strout novel. I first encountered My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) on a table in my locaI continued with the Man Booker longlist with my first Elizabeth Strout novel. I first encountered My Name is Lucy Barton (2016) on a table in my local Waterstone’s which proclaimed it to be the book of the year. Kill me if you ever catch me listening to a table’s opinion.
Lucy is in hospital.Her mother has flown to visit her and sits by her bed every day. This all happened a long time ago. Lucy views her brief period in hospital as an important chapter in her life. She sits in her hospital bed, looking at the Chrysler Building outside her window, and ponders. This is a very short novel. My ebook edition was 99-pages long. And yet, it took me a while to read it. The whole book is incredibly fragmented, something which is used in order to reflect Lucy’s life. We jump from story to story, some make up the overall narrative while some are just brief memories or meditations.
I enjoyed My Name is Lucy Barton. I understand why some are hailing it as a ‘great’ novel because it manages to pack a lot of story and emotion into a tiny package but for me it was lacking in an overall point. Its brevity reminded me of two similar novels about women eulogising their lives, Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary and Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation. Strout doesn’t reach the same levels of brilliance as Tóibín or Offill but they would make an interesting unofficial trilogy.
Some have found confusion and annoyance in the aforementioned fragmentation. I personally think it works quite well. It’s hard to get super short chapters to work correctly, the only other novel I can think of in which fragmentation is successful is Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. I applaud Strout for taking this risky approach with Lucy Barton. A lot of the novel works because of it. I feel if this book was just a straight narrative I would have been bored out of my mind. My Name is Lucy Barton takes a well-worn storyline and puts a postmodernist twist onto it. However, if one strips back the embellishments and the examines the plot, are we just left with another Jodi Picoult story? Yes and no....more
There was a point earlier on this year when it was nearly impossible to scroll through Literary Twitter without seeing someone gushing about Garth GreThere was a point earlier on this year when it was nearly impossible to scroll through Literary Twitter without seeing someone gushing about Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You (2016). In my trademark style, I read it months after the hype.
Our unnamed American narrator engages with a hustler, Mitko, whilst roaming a Bulgarian bathroom. The novel follows their relationship in three acts in which we delve into the erotic, the tragic, and the melodramatic. Many have been quick to talk about Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room as an inspiration but I feel that What Belongs to You owes a great deal of credit to Andre Gide’s L’immoraliste. I found Greenwell’s protagonist to be uneasy and unlikeable. He describes all of his sexual experiences with Mitko but all of them feel so empty – emotionally and novelistically. I found myself getting more and more bored as I continued with this short novel.
The first part of this novel, called Mitko, was published as an award-winning novella in 2011 and that explains why it is the greatest section of the novel. The other acts, A Grave and Pox, just pale in comparison and read like lesser works. They feel stitched-on because they were literally stitched on in order to create this novel. There is a clear incoherence between the parts and it caused me to keep checking how many pages were left instead of letting me enjoy the novel. It’s all so disappointing because this novel had been one of my ‘must-reads’ for this year.
I cannot write that I enjoyed What Belongs to You, which really fills me with sadness. I went into this novel expecting such great things and I was left with nothing. It’s a real pity....more
It’s currently the book on everyone’s to-read pile, Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) was only brought to my attention last week but it has already spread It’s currently the book on everyone’s to-read pile, Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016) was only brought to my attention last week but it has already spread like wildfire through the literary world.
And how I wish I could say that I liked it. Homegoing begins in Ghana in the late-1700s with Effia and Esi, two half-sisters with very different lives. Essia was sold to the white Englishman James and lives with him in his castle. In the dungeons below, Esi is preparing to be shipped off to America. The novel follows Effia and Esi’s descendants through a series of interchanging vignettes up to the present time. My problem with Homegoing lies within these vignettes. Each new vignette presents a new descendent, a new character. I don’t know about how you read but for me it takes a couple of pages to get used to a character, to be able to fully connect with them and their story. However, I found that whenever I finally did connect with the new character I was met with a page break and then a new story would begin.
For me, the idea of presenting this novel as a collection of character-driven vignettes causes it to become a disjointed mess. Fourteen characters get their own stories in this novel and my edition is 335 pages long. That means that, on average, each character got 23.9 pages to themselves. Gyasi just is not able to create whole, believable characters in 24 pages. I wish she either cut the family tree or made the book longer, I would have prefered the former.
Some parts do achieve greatness however. The stories concerning the characters in Africa are far stronger than the ones set in America, in my opinion. The story revolving around Quey and Cudjo being the standout piece of the novel that could work as an independent short story. Marjorie’s story is also the sensation of the novel’s second half. However, these glimmers of gold don’t save the rest of Homegoing from ultimately being a confused novel. I will put most of its problems down to being a debut. It’s easy to see Yaa Gyasi’s potential in Homegoing and thus I will admit that I await her next book with hope....more
Like The Sellout, I had been aware of Eileen (2015) for a while now. I’ve also been meaning to read it for equally as long. 2022 reread: still slaps!
Like The Sellout, I had been aware of Eileen (2015) for a while now. I’ve also been meaning to read it for equally as long. Once again, pushed by the Man Booker, I finally read it. Thank goodness.
Taking place over a week at Christmas in the late 1960s, Eileen tells the story of Eileen Dunlop, a woman in her early-twenties. She works at a correctional institute for young men where she stalks a security guard and spies on the inmates in solitary confinement. At home she sleeps in a cot in the attic where she pees into mason jars and indulges in laxative binges which make her bowel movements ‘torrential’ and ‘oceanic’. Her teeth are rotting from her penchant for sweets and doesn’t shower often because she enjoys stewing in her own filth. Needless to say, Eileen is a divisive narrator. Some have criticised this book for relying on shock value whilst others have praised Moshfegh for creating such a vile but enticing protagonist. My opinion is that Eileen is near a masterpiece.
Remember that scene in Trainspotting where Ewan McGregor is in the filthy toilet cubicle and proceeds in making his way into the toilet and swims around in the cistern bliss? That’s a lot like reading Eileen. You’re aware of the filth and the depravity but once you’re in there it’s actually quite beautiful. Eileen lives with her ex-cop, current-alcoholic father who she fears will kill himself eventually. At work all of her fellow employees mock and bully her for being so filthy. One cannot help but think of Eileen as an endearing character. Her life is tough, even if she brings a lot of it onto herself. You read this novel hoping thing will get better for her, hoping someone will come along and save her from herself. And someone does. From then on, Eileen wouldn’t seem out of place in Patricia Highsmith’s bibliography.
The book is written by the Eileen of right now, reminiscing about the winter that changed her life. It is an incredibly engrossing novel. Eileen is one of the most memorable characters I have read in recent years. The novel just radiates intrigue and has an ending straight out of the best Hitchcock. I will be shocked if Eileen isn’t my book of the year....more
Hystopia (2016) is one of those books where I recognise the cover but I had no idea what it was about. This is David Means’ debut novel after birthingHystopia (2016) is one of those books where I recognise the cover but I had no idea what it was about. This is David Means’ debut novel after birthing a couple of short story collections into the world. (Note to self: never read any of those books)
Hystopia began so well. Page one and we are hit with an editor’s note. I thought to myself, ‘great, a meta-novel, I already love this’. The first fifty-ish pages consist of editor’s notes, author’s note, and testimonials, all of which are fictional. We are told that the novel presented to us was written by Eugene Allen, a Vietnam vet who has since killed himself. We learn of the hours he spent in his room working on the novel and we read the opinions of the people upon whom characters in the novel are based. In the back of my mind I’m feeling the flickers of Pale Fire but that flame is quickly quenched. The novel within the novel, also called Hystopia, is a mess.
I’ve read reviews for Hystopia that mention great names like Pynchon and Cormac McCarthy. If David Means writes like Pynchon then my reviews read like Dorothy Parker’s. Hystopia is set in an America where Vietnam never ended and JFK doesn’t die in Dallas. It follows a band of outsiders as they violently roam the country, wishing they were being written by Larry McMurtry. I read whole pages thinking, ‘Am I not smart enough for this novel or does it just not make any sense?’, judging by the critical reaction – it’s the latter. It reads like if Kerouac attempted to write an IKEA manuel. A mess begets a mess.
I spent most of Hystopia waiting for it to end. The whole thing reminded me of a movie you’d see on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. What is so disappointing is that Means was really onto something with the meta-fictional parts that bookend the novel. How can they be so good but the novel so bad? Another thing that annoys me is the name. Hystopia. It’s hard to type and when you google it the first suggestion is ‘hysterectomy’. My disappointment in this novel is palpable. I hate this book....more
The Sellout (2015) has been on my radar for about a year now. I’d seen a couple of people on Literary Twitter talking about it but I’ve yet to actuallThe Sellout (2015) has been on my radar for about a year now. I’d seen a couple of people on Literary Twitter talking about it but I’ve yet to actually see a physical copy of it in any bookshops. I had almost forgotten about it until the longlist came about. So I read it first.
The Sellout is a satire about race in modern America. The novel begins with our nameless black narrator sitting before the Supreme Court. We soon discover (through oneiric but lucid prose) that he is being charged with owning a slave and segregating a school. Before you have a chance to do a double-take the narrator brings you back to his childhood. We discover that he grew up in the town formerly known as Dickens but the town is now disappearing, it barely even appears on maps anymore. Overwhelmed by a literal lack of place our narrator attempts to bring Dickens back from the ashes. In order to achieve this, he ’employs’ one of Dickens’ oldest residents and last remaining Little Rascal, Hominy, as his slave, a job that he is more than willing to do (he even insists on calling our narrator ‘massa’). He will stop at nothing to bring Dickens back.
This is a very heavy book when you think about it. However, Beatty never lets you think about it because scattered between the paragraphs on the ethics of slavery and meditations on modern blackness are jokes. Lots of jokes. This novel about slavery and segregation is one of the funniest books I’ve read in years. However, I wouldn’t go around advertising The Sellout as a ‘comic novel’. Beatty himself has said that people are reading the jokes and forgetting what the book is actually about. I see the humour of this novel as a necessary antidote, like the porter telling dick jokes after the murder of Duncan.
Beatty’s approach is brazen but brilliant. He will have you laughing and then a couple of seconds later you’ll be thinking about why you are laughing. The Sellout is one of my favourite reads of the year thus far. It’s one which plants itself into your frontal lobe and refuses to leave, like a satirical tumour. I’m scolding myself for putting this one off for a year and a half but now I’m calling shotgun on the bandwagon (if it hasn’t already left)....more
I usually do a bit of research before reading one of Shakespeare’s plays. Y’know, read over a brief summary and go through the characters and stuff. MI usually do a bit of research before reading one of Shakespeare’s plays. Y’know, read over a brief summary and go through the characters and stuff. Measure for Measure being the last play in my intense catch-up effort I decided to skip all usual preamble and just go in blind. And I absolutely adored it. Measure for Measure is one of my ultimate favourite plays of this challenge. Claudio is arrested for getting a prostitute pregnant and is sentenced to be executed. Meanwhile, the Duke has left town (but in reality he has just disguised himself as a Friar in order to spy on his own people) and the evil Angelo is put in charge of the town. Meanwhile, Claudio’s sister Isabella goes to Angelo to beg of him not to execute her brother. Angelo hesitates but comes up with a deal, if Isabella gives him her virginity he won’t execute Claudio. BAM. This play is fucking brilliant.
Measure for Measure balances on the threshold of tragedy and comedy. One scene may have the brilliantly evil Angelo doing something brilliantly evil and the next scene may contain a barrage of Pompey’s utterly hilarious one-liners. This is just such a perfect play. I have no idea why this is one of Shakespeare’s least popular works. We get 1,001 different film versions of Romeo and Juliet every year but yet there is still to be a major production of Measure for Measure. I cannot praise this play any higher, it’s an utter masterpiece....more
Even the mere mention of that title sends me into a coma. The story of Troilus and Cressida, like a lot of Shakespeare’s tragedies, borrows its plot fEven the mere mention of that title sends me into a coma. The story of Troilus and Cressida, like a lot of Shakespeare’s tragedies, borrows its plot from ancient times (you might remember it from The Iliad). We follow Troilus and Cressida as they fall in love and… wait a minute… Troilus and Cressida are barely in this play. This play should actually be called Ulysses Orates Another Fucklong Speech. Seriously. Most of Troilus and Cressida follows the generals and leaders of the Greek and Trojan forces as they plot against each other. It’s a play about guys talking about militaristic strategies. My fave!
Troilus and Cressida is just a mess. The only redeemable mote of goodness in this play can be found in the character of Thersites. He’s utterly brilliant. He’s our comic relief and literally just takes the piss out of every character and every scene. I wouldn’t have got through this play without him. I can call this play boring and I can call it arduous but I can never call it bad, purely because of Thersites. However, maybe Shakespeare should have left this story with Homer....more
I remember actually studying Twelfth Night but I don’t think I actually read it. I hope my lecturers don’t read this blog. One of Shakespeare’s most sI remember actually studying Twelfth Night but I don’t think I actually read it. I hope my lecturers don’t read this blog. One of Shakespeare’s most successful comedies, Twelfth Night concerns Viola who survives a shipwreck but thinks she has lost her twin brother. She decides to disguise herself as a man and enter the court of the Duke. Another plot follows Malvolio and the tricks played on him. Shakespeare has played with the idea of twins and cross-dressing before (in The Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona respectively). Malvolio’s plot is the better plot, in my opinion, because it is just hilarious. Malvolio’s attempted wooing of Olivia is one of Shakespeare’s funniest scenes.
The crossdressing of Viola seems kind of strange because there isn’t an overall explanation as to why she does it. She just arrives in Illyria and is like, ‘huh I guess I better dress as a guy!’ It’s a strange plot hole. I do think Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s better comedies but, like in The Merry Wives of Windsor, there is a mean streak running through the play. Like Falstaff, Malvolio is the butt of a joke played by a large part of the cast and at the end of the play he runs off cursing the lot of them. Why is everyone so mean to Malvolio? Yes, he’s a bit slow and a bit dim but really doesn’t deserve what happens to him. Apart from these qualms, Twelfth Night is a good and funny play. (Also, Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry’s Globe production is phenomenal)...more
Ah yes this little play. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play with most productions hitting the four hour mark. I’m sure you all know the plot but herAh yes this little play. Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play with most productions hitting the four hour mark. I’m sure you all know the plot but here it is anyway. Hamlet meets the ghost of his father who tells him that his uncle killed him in order to usurp the throne and marry his wife. Hamlet spends the whole play complaining about it. The end. Hamlet is not only regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest play but also one of the greatest plays of all time. Meh. It’s good. The problem with Hamlet is that it’s about Hamlet a.k.a. the most annoying character in all of English literature. I spent the majority of this play sighing whenever I read, ‘Enter Hamlet‘, or when I saw he had another navel-gazing soliloquy coming up.
I’m genuinely incredibly curious as to why this is considered Shakespeare’s greatest play. To me it was just another average one for Shakespeare. Hamlet is really a play for the minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern steal every one of their scenes, the same can be said for Ophelia, the Ghost and even fucking Yorick. I did overall enjoy Hamlet, it’s one of Shakespeare’s best constructed plays. There aren’t any of the filler scenes that really permeated a lot of the early plays and I found it to be one of the easier plays to read. However, the 1590s equivalent of Holden Caulfield takes some getting used to....more
Shakespeare finishes off his Prince Hal tetralogy with Henry V, a play in which we see the boisterous Hal transformed into the mature and respectable Shakespeare finishes off his Prince Hal tetralogy with Henry V, a play in which we see the boisterous Hal transformed into the mature and respectable King Henry V. Anyone who knows anything about English history will know that Henry V is most famous for the Battle of Agincourt in the early 1400s. It’s probably one of the most famous battles in English history and Shakespeare’s dramatisation of it is nothing if not masterful. In Henry V Shakespeare employs a ‘chorus’, literally a character who appears at the beginning of every act to tell the audience what is happening and where the action of the following act is taking place. The chorus is a genius move by Shakespeare. Previous ‘battle’ plays have been plagued by confusion as to who is who and what is what (*cough* the Henry VI trilogy) but this is completely avoided in Henry V. I’m going to make the premature judgement and state that Henry V is Shakespeare’s best history play.
In Henry V everything just comes together. Some of the speeches are just brilliant and there isn’t a single character wasted. There is also a great deal of impartialism in my opinion, Shakespeare equally shows the French side and even includes scenes wholly in French. This was actually my first four-star play of this challenge (I have given four-stars to other plays in the past, e.g. Julius Caesar, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream). This is one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces and an incredible fitting ending to the tetralogy....more
You may remember Falstaff from Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. Well, try to keep that image of Falstaff in your head because the Falstaff in ThYou may remember Falstaff from Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2. Well, try to keep that image of Falstaff in your head because the Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor is nothing but a sad shell of magnificent character. It’s obvious that Falstaff was such a popular character that Shakespeare decided to give him his own play, just like how the Minions somehow got their own movie. The Merry Wives of Windsor begins with Falstaff devising a plan to court two married women in order to get their money. However, both women quickly realise they’re both part of Falstaff’s ruse and conspire to play along. The wives tell their husbands about the plot and quickly everyone is in on playing Falstaff at his own game. That’s the basic plot: everyone playing tricks on Falstaff. Poor guy.
The Merry Wives of Windsor is good if you’re looking for two-hours of slapstick and bawdiness. It’s an aggressively minor play. It closely follows to formula of Shakespeare’s ‘early funny ones’ such as The Comedy of Errors and Love’s Labour’s Lost. However, none of this makes up for the fact that Shakespeare literally shits all over one of his greatest creations. The actions and treatment of Falstaff in this play are completely out of character. Also the fact that the entire cast go completely out of their way just to play a mean-spirited joke on him leaves a real bad taste. The Merry Wives of Windsor is never great, or even good, but it is isn’t bad. It is mostly forgotten for a reason though....more
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