The Commitments

— What’s that you’ve got there?

— The Commitments. Roddy Doyle.

— Any good?

— Brilliant.

— Care to expand on that?

— You can read it in 24 hours, easy. Mainly dialogue and onomatopoeic transcriptions of music …

— Onomato …

— That’s words which sound like …

— I know what it means!

— DUH DUH DUH DUH, BA DA DA DA …

— Okay, I get it, I get it! Anything else?

— It’s about a band. The hardest working band in Dublin, a working class band, for working class people. They’re on a mission to bring soul music to Dublin.

— What’s their message?

— Sex. Also politics. Mostly sex.

— Okay. Who are they?

— The main guy, the ideas man, is Jimmy Rabbitte. He auditions them and manages the band. Young guys, three girls. An old guy who plays the trumpet called Joey The Lips Fagan. Because he has a stage name, they all have to have stage names. But most of them have only just learned to play an instrument or sing.

— They’re novices.

— Exactly, which is why it’s so exciting. Optimistic. They think they can do anything, and they almost can. And it’s funny; really, really funny.

— Better than Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha?

— It’s a different kind of book. It doesn’t pound you in the guts and then steal your playlunch in quite the same way. But it does have soul.

— Lots of soul?

— Heaps of soul. Overflowing with soul.

— And this punctuation?

— Well, it’s not as if he’s French, is it? But he can get away with it.

This Is How

It is difficult but not impossible to claim M J Hyland as an Australian author. She doesn’t live here. She wasn’t born here. Only a small part of one of her novels takes place here. So those of us who would insist on calling her an Australian may need to rely on the fact that she spent part of her life here, and studied law and English at The University of Melbourne. This Is How is her third published novel, and like the first two, is written in the first person present tense and focuses on the life of a young person who is more than usually different from others.

In How the Light Gets In, Lou Connor, a teenage Australian exchange student, dreams of leaving the family with whom she has nothing in common, and finding acceptance in middle-class America. She sets out only to find herself living with a family whose apparent perfection lacks any real warmth. Lou cannot help rebelling against the stultifying parameters set by her host family the Hardings. However, while brilliantly written, the book is less convincing and less complete than the two that followed.

Carry Me Down, told from the perspective of 11-year-old John Egan, follows John on his quest to have his gifts as a human lie detector recognised in the Guinness Book of Records. When his family moves from the small Irish town of Gorey to Dublin it becomes clear that there are larger and more painful truths to be detected than John had ever realised. Hyland’s many great qualities as a writer (apart from her obvious knack for choosing wonderful titles) include her ability to convey the importance of young people’s concerns. Adult realities float into the consciousness of this excellent novel like sounds heard under water.

In This Is How, Patrick Oxtoby is a skilled mechanic who heads for a seaside town, a hundred miles from home, after being dumped by his fiancée. Lonely, awkward, anxious, and plagued by a difficult relationship with his father, Patrick sets about trying to start a new life, make new friends and meet new girls. To tell much more of the story would be to spoil it. Suffice to say, this book is capable of slicing into its reader with the deftness and facility of a very sharp knife. You won’t know what’s happening until it is too late. A modern Australian classic.

‘I got to thinking that Sarah had only been practising on me, getting her confidence in sex and romance and gathering up some extra nerve so she could move to another man. I got to thinking that I’d filled her full of hot pride, that she’d saved it up to use against me.

She said she was breaking up with me because I didn’t know how to express my emotions. Thing is, I didn’t have that many. As far as I was concerned, it was pretty simple. I was in love with her and I liked our life and we laughed a lot and it felt so good to be in bed with her and have her touching me. I liked what we had.’

You Shall Know Our Velocity

Dave Eggers’ writing is the literary equivalent of spreading a canvas on some grass, weighting each corner with stones, climbing a ladder, then splashing down bucketfuls of paint (lapis lazuli, crimson and jade), descending and having a nap while it dries, before expertly chipping off the ugly globs with a tiny file. You Shall Know Our Velocity is the kind of book that probably gets up and goes about its private business when you leave the room. It definitely wins all manner of silent arguments with your other novels while you are sleeping.

Following the unexpected death of their friend Jack, Will and Hand set out from Milwaukee, determined to give away $38,000 in cash in one week. The conditions of their round the world airfare require them to move west, without backtracking. The need to keep moving in order to make it back in time, and the vagaries of visas and time zones get in the way pretty much immediately. It’s also much harder than anticipated to give away so much money, because of course they can’t give it to just anyone. It has to feel right.

This is a book that understands the pain of being simultaneously confronted with the size of the world and the limitations of being allocated only one life. What about all the other lives you could live! The places you could go and things you could do, with more time. ‘We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. Oh to live among peacocks. I’d seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be mad geniuses waiting to take over everything.’

Whatever you do, do not make the mistake of thinking that this novel has no strong emotional base. This writing is modern, self-assured and cool. But this is more than an empty display of technical ability. It is much more than a diversion from everyday life, despite its capacity to entertain with its streetsmart humour and to delight with well-placed departures from orthodoxy. Eggers is not afraid to get close to the edge of the most frightening craters that we peer into while alone in the dark, alone in our own heads.

As in subsequent works like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the more recent Zeitoun, he does not skirt around death, guilt or anger. Here is a writer with honesty, heart and the ability to write it all. You should read this book. But that isn’t why you’ll read it. You’ll read it, in a hurry, because you won’t be able to stop yourself.

Zuleika Dobson: Or an Oxford Love Story

Oh Zuleika! What can be done about her? Apparently, not very much. Zuleika Dobson is Max Beerbohm’s only novel and was published in 1911. (It doesn’t appear frequently in bookshops but can be found online with relative ease.) Zuleika Dobson is an orphan, a former governess and a mediocre conjurer. This doesn’t stop the adorable young woman from breaking hearts from every stage on which she appears in Europe and America. Unfortunately for Miss Dobson, the scores of men who dote on her are missing the one thing she requires: the appearance of not loving her at all.

The thing is, Zuleika simply can’t bring herself to love a man who grovels at her feet. This seems about to change when she goes to stay with her elderly uncle, the Warden of Judas College, Oxford. Of course, heads turn and new devotees assemble the moment she alights at Oxford station. But Zuleika hadn’t reckoned on the Duke of Dorset, easily Oxford’s most eligible bachelor. So determined is he not to fall in love with any of the young women who had always been so determined to woo him, the Duke assumes a frosty manner and rebuffs all of Zuleika’s early advances. All too soon, however, Zuleika begins to exert her usual potent magic and the Duke’s heart is lost. Naturally, this means Zuleika must fall out of love with him as quickly as she fell into it. In an attempt to demonstrate his boundless affection, the Duke declares his intention of taking his own life. As soon as this fact becomes generally known, every other undergraduate in the university vows to follow his fine example.

This is a good story, lightly written and often humorous. It does have the distinct feel of a very long and convoluted inside joke – perhaps it was intended for a certain type of Oxford alumnus. This doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of others, but gives the sense that the enjoyment would be increased for anyone with personal experience of the University. Zuleika Dobson shimmers with wit and rare words, as if Beerbohm had written the whole thing while giving a quiet chuckle, and the dictionary open beside him. While it is amusing, the novel lacks any real variation in tone or pitch. It is a good book, which, with some careful editing, could have been half as long and twice as good.

‘Bright eyes, light feet – she trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ever been seen in Oxford.’

In Cold Blood

Many books are called ‘compelling’ and this one deserves to be. In Cold Blood is an extraordinarily well-structured and carefully paced work of what has been called ‘novelistic journalism’. Truman Capote has his readers absolutely in his control from start to finish.

The book opens by introducing us to the Clutter family, four members of which were murdered in their home in Kansas in 1952. Allowing the reader to grow to like these immensely likeable people is necessary to the story’s emotional force. It is necessary in order to communicate the magnitude of the crimes and the horror of them.

This is not a detective story. The reader learns very early in the narrative who committed the crimes. Rather, the scenes unfold in chronological order from multiple vantage points, the result of six years of dedicated research on the part of the author. Knowing the outcome of the police investigation in advance somehow does not detract from the suspense of following it at a distance. The ability to describe the crime and its consequences in such detail give it a weighty reality that is often sickening.

Capote goes to great lengths to describe the backgrounds of those who committed these crimes, an approach which allows each of us to draw our conclusions about the causes of crime in any society. What the book does very successfully is to demonstrate the futility of capital punishment for the deterrence of at least some serious crimes. This is because the crimes were committed by persons in the knowledge that if they were to be caught, they would likely hang. Without making any pronouncement on the efficacy of the criminal justice system of the time, Capote leaves room to cast it into doubt. What punishment can be appropriate for anyone involved in the murder of an innocent family, when nothing can give them any comfort or redress? What is the alternative?

That Capote took six years to write the book is proof of his conviction that the story was worth exploring, and worth writing well. He was right.

Journal of Katherine Mansfield for Persephone Reading Weekend

Katherine Mansfield aspired to write truly and well, to capture something genuine and to get at what is most pure. Her short stories are clean, sharp and light. They reach to the centre of our inner lives and strip away the layers that would hide our vulnerable selves. Mansfield was not afraid to stir up melancholy or bitterness, to show regret, loss or pain. But she did so in a way which was beautiful and transparent, without artifice or gimmickry. She used her immense power to draw out our emotions judiciously.

In the Journal, really an edited collection of unposted letters and notebooks never intended for publication, readers are allowed a rare glimpse into the private thoughts of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The impression of Mansfield that emerges is one of a writer who positively anguished over her work and was frequently stricken with writer’s block. Even as the Journal progresses, and reaches a point in time at which Mansfield was becoming well-known, there is no trace of vanity or self-satisfaction. She was highly self-critical in the face of deteriorating health, wartime deprivations, separation from friends and loved ones and very limited financial resources. Certain passages are awful to read.

Yet there are descriptions to be found that resonate with a joyful understanding and capacity to express that which is simple and good in daily life. If Mansfield writes that the sun is music that fills the sky, we cannot disagree with her. There are days when the sun in Melbourne is brash and brassy. There are days when the light here is soft and tinkling. When Mansfield writes of her cat pausing on the edge of a sea of grass, hesitating to take the plunge into the green waves, there is something in that cat of every cat. We see grass as we have not seen it before, and we will think of her cat every time we see another cat dive into a garden.

Readers of this Journal may well have mixed feelings about its publication. Compiled after her death by her long-term partner, John Middleton Murry, some have questioned his selection and arrangement of material. It would be inappropriate to read this book without regard to the fact that Mansfield did not have the opportunity to approve its content for publication. However, for those who admire her work, and can put to one side their qualms about the way in which it came to exist, the Journal is indispensable reading.

‘It’s only now I am beginning to see again and to recognise again the beauty of the world. Take the swallows to-day, their flutter-flutter, their velvet-forked tails, their transparent wings that are like the fins of fishes. The little dark head and breast golden in the light. Then the beauty of the garden, and the beauty of raked paths….Then, the silence.’

Mrs Dalloway

To read Virginia Woolf is to find the subtlest, most ambiguous impressions turned into prose. It is to discover that everyday feelings, which are nonetheless complex or difficult to categorise, can be made into something articulate. Mrs Dalloway presents one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, in an uninterrupted flow of thoughts, memories, reflection and dialogue. Novels without chapters are often challenging because they force their readers to find a suitable place to pause, and this is no exception. However, in this case, the unorthodox structure gives the story a sense of continuing both backwards and forwards in time beyond the covers of the novel.

If Mrs Dalloway simply recounted one day in the life of a 52-year-old woman, it would attract far fewer readers. (This is in spite of the fact that, refreshingly, Clarissa does not feel old and rejoices in having years and years to live.) However, just as in Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie wrote that in order to understand one life you need to ‘swallow the world’, Woolf appreciated that in order to give the events of the day some substance, it would be necessary for the reader to swallow a decent portion of Clarissa’s past.

As its title indicates, Mrs Dalloway is deeply concerned with what it means to be married. How do we choose the person whom we should marry? What happens if the choice turns out to be a poor one? The characters therefore include the friends Clarissa knew before she was married, and who observed and influenced her choice of husband. Their significance to Clarissa is revealed through a series of vivid recollections, and the many threads of this story are ultimately brought loosely together for the party that Clarissa is planning for the evening.

This novel is full of the joys and sadnesses that run through daily life: watching a sky-writer, riding an omnibus, walking in the country, slowly becoming unable to communicate with a loved one, fearing the loss of a friend. It is highly perceptive, elegant and occasionally painful.

‘Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in.’

The Ambassadors

The outline of The Ambassadors is promising for anyone with romantic leanings: Lewis Lambert Strether is sent to Paris by the formidable Mrs Newsome to bring home her wayward son, Chadwick, who is presumed to be under the influence of a wicked woman. Once he arrives, however, Strether begins to appreciate the charms of Paris, and discovers that Chad is really somewhat improved by his time away and even by the company he keeps.

Unfortunately, Henry James seems to have missed an opportunity to produce any particularly clear impression of Paris itself. There are few descriptions of the city and most of the action takes place in drawing rooms, hotels and private courtyards. This is disappointing given that James was certainly able to create a vivid sense of a city, as he did with Florence in Portrait of a Lady. (It is difficult to be too critical on this point since anyone who picks up this book, regardless of whether they have visited Paris or not, is likely to have an imagined Paris. This imagined Paris will possibly prove resistant to all forms of attack, such as other people’s opinions or an encounter with the real thing. Still, it is a shame that the novel does not indulge more of our collective imaginings.)

Paris is used for contrast with Woollett Massachusetts, a town that by all reports is not especially interesting but well loved by its inhabitants. With the exception of a scene at Notre Dame, the novel could have been set almost anywhere sufficiently far from Woollett as to require the dispatch of its ambassadors in person to retrieve Chad. The lack of physical description may be necessary given that the novel is frequently cited as an example of ‘psychological’ fiction. It does draw out the consequences of choosing a life which departs from that which society or family might expect. To most modern readers, the source of the conflict in the novel is unlikely to be as psychologically interesting as it was at the time of publication. The passage of time has robbed the novel of some of its impact and relevance. By confining the narrative to Strether’s perspective, the novel also fails to explore the full richness of the psychological material offered by the story. However, it does make a clear case for avoiding prejudgment, and hearing all the facts before reaching an opinion. It also suggests that, providing we are ready to learn and to be open to life’s variety and challenges, we are susceptible to change at any age.

The Ambassadors is not easy to read, and James has a penchant for interrupting his characters mid-sentence for no apparent reason. Along with the unlikely-sounding dialogue, this has the effect of jolting us back to awareness that this is a novel, in which the author frequently makes his presence a nuisance. The plot may be enough to tempt others to read this book, especially given that it was James’ personal favourite of his novels. Perhaps their efforts will be rewarded with something more than a pervasive sense of drawing room hush and the sound of polite but irritatingly difficult conversation.

East of Eden

‘I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story uses the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar — if he is financially fortunate.’

East of Eden is probably not the best known of John Steinbeck’s novels, but a book that inquires more thoroughly into the nature of human relationships or the human conscience is hard to imagine. Taking for its inspiration the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, and based in part on the maternal history of Steinbeck himself, the book follows the lives of the Trask family. In each generation a pair of brothers competes for the attention and love of their father and must live under the strain of constant suspicion and jealousy.

Steinbeck’s dialogue is one of the book’s many winning attributes: it quite simply seems real and unaffected — it has the ‘appearance of truth’. Indeed the dialogue saves the book, which is a relatively lengthy one, from becoming daunting. This need only be qualified by the observation that certain of the characters (namely Lee, the Trasks’ servant, and Samuel Hamilton, a great friend of the family) are used somewhat gratuitously as mouthpieces of what appears to be Steinbeck’s own personal philosophy.

Set mainly in the Salinas Valley of Steinbeck’s childhood, the descriptions of the natural landscape fill out the novel and satisfy every want of the reader’s imagination without descending into self-indulgence. Who could fail to be captivated by a turn of phrase such as the following, appearing on the very first page: ‘They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love’?

The novel is not subtle about its message. Fortunately for readers, the message is a comforting one. Steinbeck is very clear about his wish to redeem the autonomy and individuality of the human soul: each person is capable of making decisions about what it is right to do, independently of background, family connections or past choices. This removes the right to make excuses for our conduct but it leaves us with the inherent capacity to do good.

We can only speculate about why Steinbeck was interested in writing this novel. If by his own definition Steinbeck was a liar, then you may depend on it that East of Eden will be one of the greatest lies you ever read.

Lovesong

‘Tell the truth, her grandmother had always said. Speak it, whatever it is. Do what you must do but do not lie about what it is that you do. Do not call it something else. Call it what it is.’

Alex Miller’s Lovesong is a novel that will make a weary, withered soul plump and grateful (and not only because the word ‘pastries’ appears very frequently). This is a book that uncovers the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. It shows us what may happen when our lives as we imagined they would be, and our lives as we live them, are misaligned. It is a gentle study in cognitive dissonance.

Ken is purporting to be a ‘retired’ writer, and has returned from Venice to live in Carlton with his adult daughter Clare. While trying to fill his newly empty days, Ken meets John Patterner and is fascinated by his past. On a rainy day in Paris many years earlier, John took refuge in a café, Chez Dom, which was run by Tunisian immigrants Houria and her niece Sabiha. John and Sabiha fell deeply in love, were married, and eventually took over the running of the café. Despite the closeness of their relationship, their life together failed to correspond to their individual long-held dreams. For Sabiha, it was her child who was missing. For John, it was the work he intended to do as a teacher in Australia. To what lengths would they go in pursuit of the lives they always thought they would lead?

Miller’s writing is straightforward, warm and spiced with just enough humour. Simple moments in the daily life of his characters are clearly described and have the ring of truth. While there are some implausible aspects to the story’s critical event, the sincerity of this novel as a whole makes it irresistible. The story has been allowed to take precedence over showy writing. No word is wasted. Above all, it is a novel that can be devoured with absolutely no adverse consequences for the health of your soul or otherwise.

‘It was a lovely Melbourne autumn day. Autumn is the best time of the year in Melbourne. The oppressive heat of summer is gone and the sun gives just the right amount of warmth to be comfortable without a jacket or a cardigan, no wind and maybe just one or two innocent white clouds going by. You have to be here. People are happy on days like this.’

Surfacing

In celebration of Virago Reading Week (24–30 January 2011), hosted by Book Snob and A Few of My Favourite Books, the first post of this blog is dedicated to a Virago.

Surfacing was first published in 1972, yet if you were to fold the corner of every page on which you found something fresh or remarkable, you might be left with a paper accordion. Margaret Atwood conveys complex meanings without ever resorting to a hackneyed phrase. To take one small example, she writes early in the novel of weeds that are ‘a month tall’. We read on for a few moments and then do a double take — the height of weeds isn’t measured in months! But the image is perfectly clear and instantly recognisable. Atwood is also particularly good at offering answers to questions we may never have thought to ask. Just why is it that French swear words come from religion and English swear words from the body? Because in each culture we swear with words derived from whatever we fear most, of course.

This is a deceptively short, seemingly straightforward novel, with one very important feature that sets it apart from most other novels: we never learn the name of the first person narrator. Since the story is often told in the present tense, the reader has the sense of slowing sliding into the novel and becoming the protagonist. You begin to feel that the ‘I’ of this novel is really you, that these are your thoughts and tangled memories.

You are a young woman who has returned to the remote island in northern Quebec, Canada, where you grew up. Your father has disappeared and you feel certain that you alone will be able to find him. Because you have no car, you take your married friends David and Anna, their car and your lover Joe, for a kind of holiday. The others know nothing about the island and it falls to you to protect them. This is a place that is seething with memories, a place that you had to leave to escape your parents’ innocence. Now that you have returned, you feel more keenly the critical differences between yourself and other people. There are mysterious rules and ways of being in this place and nobody else understands them.

‘I can feel my lost child surfacing within me, forgiving me, rising from the lake where it has been prisoned for so long, its eyes and teeth phosphorescent; the two halves clasp, interlocking like fingers, it buds, it sends out fronds.’

This secluded island with its limited range of characters becomes the perfect setting for an exploration of much more far-reaching concerns. Surfacing burrows into the relationship between humans and nature. It draws up from the deep some troubling questions about the roles of women and men, and the ways in which we usually choose to arrange our relationships. You may be left in painful uncertainty about many things that seemed to have been settled for you by other people, such as the usefulness of marriage, the durability of love and the stability of national identity.