The Sea by John Banville

Ok so the blog has been created – it only took me two months to work up the nerve to publish my thoughts…but I’m really glad I decided to write reviews of the books as it makes me pay more attention to what I’m reading.  Reading, I guess like anything else, can often be a passive experience, especially when you do it for relaxation and you don’t really want to engage the brain more than necessary.  However, formulating an opinion as I read makes me reflect on certain passages, the style, what the book is trying to achieve etc. and therefore makes me participate far more actively in the experience and I consequently get a lot more out of it than I would do otherwise.

‘The Sea’ was a joy to read, the use of language was poetic and delightful to experience.  I have a confession I’m a bit of a word geek – I love learning new words and think that the dictionary and the thesaurus are fascinating!  Therefore this book written by a wordsmith, with each exact word chosen to most efficiently convey its meaning, was an opportunity to be savoured.  I read it with the dictionary at hand and took huge pleasure in expanding my vocabulary throughout the pages.  Banville’s descriptions were evocative and through the language conveyed deep meaning to the story and its characters.

The style of the story told completely from the first person perspective conveyed the great claustrophobia of one’s own mind.  His thought processes and reactions to the various circumstances are played out in the course of the story with remembrances of his childhood stay by the sea and the gentle revelations of his past.  The lack of direct references to a specific time or place contribute to the sense of his being ‘at sea’ in his life and the style of the prose conveys a sense of the bathysphere of grief in which he is trapped. 

I was particularly affected by the storyline of his wife’s diagnosis and course of her demise due to cancer.  With a medical background I was struck by the reality conveyed of their reaction to the news initially.  Without being overly dramatic or emotional I think he captures the mood incredibly perceptively and reading these passages gives a raw glimpse of life contemplating the impossibility of death.  Throughout the story I was given a real sense of seeing through the characters eyes with a very literal viewpoint conveyed so expertly through the language and attention to detail in the descriptions. 

With such precise analysis of himself and his world, the effect on the reader is to attempt to turn the mirror on oneself and to relish the life in which we live.  In particular this book highlighted what a privilege language can be – this is definitely a book to delight and captivate!

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald

After a rather slow start to my New Year’s Resolution of reading the Bookers and managing only to read Wolf Hall in January, February has definitely been more productive as I finish my fourth this month.  The idea of doing a blog is becoming more of a plan as I now have five reviews to show for my efforts and therefore feel I may as well share my thoughts with the world (or at least people I know who are interested!)  Although I do have issues with why anyone should care about my opinion…I do read a lot, however, not in any professional capacity.  I am a junior doctor with leanings towards the arts in my spare time.  I love stories and escaping to other existences as often as I can.  And so on to the next…

This book takes a leap back through Booker prizes to 1979 and is a pleasant read.  It chronicles the lives of a disparate group of people living in houseboats on Battersea Reach in the 1960s.  It conjures up a feel for what life would have been like with a slight hangover from the war with a sense of the emphasis on youth from an unusual view from an unconventional perspective.

The writing conveys the haphazard life experienced by these slightly eccentric characters united through a wish to live on the water.  In contrast to other books which highlight a particular part of history through fiction, this was almost more like a short story. It gave you a glimpse into the characters’ lives and although events occur there is no dominating plot, rather a narration of the happenings of every day lives of everyday people coping with what life, and the river throws at them.

I can’t say that I have been hugely impacted by this book but feel it was a quiet story depicted well in an understated way, with no message or huge insight to impart.  Just a tale of ordinary lives told elegantly.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

My journey continues through these literary giants and I am transported from Ireland to Northern India from a bleak world to a far more vibrant setting filled with plenty of smells, sights and noise.  And a particularly engaging protagonist.

It is an interesting premise of a novel structure by boldly stating the conclusion of the story at the beginning and slowly revealing the intervening plot.  Through out the story the main character through his own voice gave a bold glimpse into Indian caste system from the perspective of the poor and I got a real feel for this character’s philosophy and how and what had shaped it.  The analogy of his life as being stuck in a rooster coop was brilliantly evocative and has stayed with me since reading the book.  Moreover, the writing conveys a real sense of the extremely various lives being conducted in Delhi in close proximity and contrasts dramatically to the Darkness of rural India, highlighting the impact of the Western world on the society.

This book made me reflect on principles of right and wrong with reference to the context and the sympathy with the character’s fate which the author had constructed.  As good books tend to do, I thought about how I would respond in a similar set of circumstances giving me more insight into myself as a person.

The style of writing as if the character was recounting his own life story was hugely informing and entertaining emphasising the sense of immediacy and involvement in the character’s world.  Brillliant!

The Gathering by Anne Enright

I should state that I read mainly classic books that I know are worth reading as reinforced by their existence for generations.  Unfortunately I find choosing modern books a bit of a minefield and I can be disappointed unless I stick to a particular genre or select recommendations.  I’m really enjoying the randomness of the books and so far in only three books a huge variety has been demonstrated by the wide-ranging subject matter, the styles of the authors and the characters portrayed.

This story was set in contemporary Ireland and chronicled the gathering of the surviving members of a twelve child family for a funeral.  The perspective is from one of these grown-up children and deals with her grieving process.  Through warped memories of her childhood and imaginings of events of her grandparents she questions what effects her childhood had on herself and her siblings, in particular her brother who had committed suicide. 

The interactions of the family under these difficult circumstances give an insight on the group dynamic that had been formed by the years of all living under the same roof as children and the impact of being one of such a large family.  All in all giving a particularly bleak outlook on their lives.  From the perspective of this woman’s depression she casts her mind back to the events and people who have shaped her, dwelling on sex in various forms as the uniting theme.

I can’t say I enjoyed this book as I found it too grim and not engaging enough to counterbalance the feeling of dissatisfaction that permeated through the course of the story.  Although clearly it was effective at conveying this mood through the writing and I gained an intimate insight into the makings of people through their family and the events which befall them.  It also made me reflect on the nature of memory and how it is altered by emotion and affected by adult perspective.  So thought-provoking despite being bleak and depressing.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

I had a new and fun experience of going into my local library clutching my now holy grail of a list of Booker Prize winners, and just trawling around for specific books in a sort of literary treasure hunt.  I pick up the books and head to check them out without judging the cover, reading the blurb or assessing the author.  This is a new way of reading modern books for me and I rather like it, especially as I don’t think I would have picked up this book without the stimulus of this project – and I’m so glad I did! 

The descriptions are sublime and the characters are complex, underpinned by a stimulating structure of crossing between two worlds and back into the past.  The story was set in a period of history I know very little about and it took me most of the book to establish the precise time the novel was dealing with, however, it was nonetheless enlightening.   The personal perspectives of the characters give an insightful view of the 1986 Gorkhaland movement building a well-rounded overview of the situation.  I particularly liked the way the story followed a characters train of thought from the present to past events as ones own mind is apt to do.

The writing is vivid and atmospheric, transporting you to the Himalayas and contrasting the immigrant world of New York.  The conflict between expectations and aspirations of the developing world unrealised by the reality of emigrating was conveyed ably.  A fascinating book written exceptionally well.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Already, with this first book, I was out of my usual comfort zone of genre.  I have a, possibly unjustified, distrust of historical fiction as I feel that I would just prefer to read a non-fiction account of events as in a dramatisation I don’t know what to trust as generally accepted fact versus imagined content.  As I am not qualified to assess the historical accuracy, as a novel I thought it was a satisfactory tale.   Through the writing I felt as though I was peering over Thomas Cromwell’s shoulder for the duration of the book with a sense of immediacy and intimacy with the events and characters.  However, unfortunately I couldn’t help but wish that I hadn’t been at Cromwell’s side for the whole time as the events and characters were rather tedious.  The linear style gave a sense of the pace of the time, however, the endless characters were difficult to identify, particularly during conversations as it was unclear as to who was speaking and what their role was. 

I suppose that from my point of view historical fiction is fighting a losing battle as to remain faithful to the history, plotlines cannot be interfered with and therefore it has none of the advantages of fiction, of the editing process that allows the story to flow.   The cast of characters is ready-made and imagined conversation is limited by the actual events which have been documented.

Thomas Cromwell as represented by Mantel was a compelling character and she introduced me to an unfamiliar genre about a man I know little about in a well-known context.  However, as a whole it had limited success as a novel due to constraints of plot and characters.  All in all I’m glad I read it but was equally glad when I had finished it!  Although I would quite like to know what happened next…

Deciding how to start...

While considering the logistical demands of reading all the Booker Prize winning books I did consider buying them all, secondhand due to financial reasons!  However, I decided with threats to our library system in the pipeline I would exercise my democratic right by borrowing as many as possible and then perhaps purchase any particular highlights that I could not live without owning.  While contemplating a strategy I realised that it would be a challenge to read them in any order so I decided that as Wolf Hall was the only one that was owned by any of my immediate friends or family, this would be as good as any with which to start the process.