If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor

If you listen, you can hear it.
The city, it sings.
If you stand quietly, at the foot of the garden, in the middle of a street, on the roof of a house.
It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.



This was an impulse buy. I've never heard of this one before, but I saw it in a charity shop the other week, really liked the introduction, was intrigued by the blurb on the back, and started reading it almost immediately for my next book. It's about a 'normal' summer day on a street in what is a Northern city, but could be a city anywhere in Britain - someone is washing their car, kids are playing cricket in the street, a couple of students are packing up to leave at the end of the year... until out of the blue a stunning event shatters that normality. Interweaved with this narrative is the story of what is happening three years later to one of the people who was living in this street at the time and witnessed that terrible day.


She's never said anything to me, not really, not when it mattered.
Our conversations always seemed to be functional, brief discussions about how something was to be arranged, a passing enquiry about a state of health...
And she didn't ask me questions either, she never used to ask where I was going, or who I was going with, or what time I was coming back, and if I mentioned it to my friends they'd say I was lucky but I wasn't so sure.


The people in this book are all defined by what number house they lived in. We only find out a few of their names, most of them will never be named - and this 'community of strangers' is so typical of our urban disconnectedness. This is a very 'true' book. The dialogue and the descriptions of what different characters are thinking is just so right.  But it's also a very poetic book, describing the beauty to be found in what appears on the surface to be the most mundane details of everyday life.

Ultimately McGregor's novel is a wonderfully-poignant story of life and death, and of the interconnectedness of us all - and it is a remarkable debut.



Dickens By Peter Ackroyd

For this is the challenge, to make biography an agent of real knowledge. To find in a day, a moment, a passing image or gesture, the very spring and source of his creativity; and to see in these details, too, the figure of the moving age.

This is the first book in my self-styled What The Dickens! Challenge. As I've had no luck trying to read a Dickens' novel so far in my life, I realised I'd have to read a good biography of the author to really understand him and therefore appreciate his novels. 

Unusually, this biography begins with Dickens' death in 1870 - 'For as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning' (A Tale of Two Cities). As Ackroyd shows, it is Dickens' childhood experiences that had a profound effect on his life and his novels - arguably the biggest impact on him was the fear of debt induced by his father's profligacy and ending up in Marshalsea debtors' prison. This made Dickens keep on pushing himself to write more novels, edit more periodicals, go on more reading tours, even when he was financially very well-off, as well as being the inspiration for scenes in several of his books. On the positive side, Dickens' love of all things theatrical was something that began at a very young age and he adored the buzz of being on stage, reading his Christmas stories and selected scenes from his novels to a large audience, right up to the end of his life - though some would argue that the readings hastened the end of his life.

We find out about Dickens the junior law clerk, Dickens the parliamentary reporter, Dickens the almost actor - all excellent preparation for Dickens the writer. We also find out how much travelling he did, constantly on the move, whether crossing repeatedly between England and France, the frequent house moves with his family in tow, or walking for miles every day - he had so much energy. But it's the details of his private life that you will really remember, this man who described so beguilingly the warmth of the family home, especially at Christmas. His wife Catherine bore her husband ten children - an excessive number even by Victorian standards - and this despite suffering from severe post-natal depression with every pregnancy. Dickens was enamoured with two of Catherine's younger sisters - he originally wanted to be buried in the same grave as his sister-in-law Mary. And then there's his relationship with Ellen Ternan. Ackroyd is convinced that this was a non-sexual relationship, but I'd like to find out more about this woman, so I'm adding Claire Tomalin's book The Invisible Woman to my reading list for this year.

Does Peter Ackroyd succeed in this challenge, to 'make biography an agent of real knowledge'? Absolutely. This is a very comprehensive and persuasive book about a very complex man - my only quibble with it is that there is no timeline provided, though it has a full index.

Knowing more about the man, I'm definitely tempted to read some of his books, finally.

Anatomy of Murder by Imogen Robertson

"Whereas Crowther and I can blunder about asking whatever we like, and people will assume we have simply discovered murder to be an enlivening pastime?" Harriet's voice was softer than it had been hitherto, and was laced now with amusement.

This book is set in 1781, sixth year of the American Rebellion, third year of the Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce. It begins with a naval battle off Newfoundland, but before the story becomes too Patrick O'Brien, the action switches completely to London, where a man's body is found in the Thames.

It's a story of murder, espionage, castrati and music, with a large cast of characters ranging from the richest patrons of the Opera to the poorest street orphans. It features two unusual detectives: Harriet Westerman, the strong-willed, red-haired (so she must be quite fiery, obviously!) wife of a naval Captain, and the much older and colder Gabriel Crowther, an independently-wealthy gentleman who happens to be an expert in anatomy and early forensic science.

It's the second story in the series so far, and reference is often made to events which happened in the first book, Instruments of Darkness, which is pretty irritating, as it positively screams 'buy my other book or you won't fully-understand this one!'

I read this bookclub book on holiday back in August, and because I was on holiday I found it to be entertaining enough, mainly because of the historical setting. Was it believable? I just about managed to suspend my disbelief whilst reading it, but some plot details and especially the two main characters struck me as being pretty improbable. How these two ended up working together to solve crime is the biggest mystery in the book - it's almost tempting to read Instruments of Darkness to see how this eighteenth-century twist on Mulder and Scully began. But crime fiction has never been my favourite genre.

We finally met up for a bookclub meeting on Friday evening - our last one was back in November. We've all met up several times since then - for a couple of parties, a celebratory meal, starting the Winchcombe Way... - we've just not managed to get together to discuss any books.

What did the other five members think of this one? Unusually,  we were all roughly in agreement. The member who originally put it forward as one of the choices was very disappointed in it, but it was a light read in between all of the heavier books we'd been reading. We all felt that the reviews bore little relationship to the actual book. The author had done just enough historical research, but it felt like a screenplay rather than a novel. There was no humour in this book. And the final word goes to RKW, who said that the writing wasn't offensively bad.

Instantly forgettable.



The Bridge by Iain Banks - DNF

I really enjoyed the first book I read by Iain Banks, the dark fairytale The Business, and have been looking out for more books by this author. I liked the introduction to this one when I saw it, so I bought this copy from one of the many charity shops in town recently (and it's so good to be buying books again!):


Trapped. Crushed. Weight coming from all directions, entangled in the wreckage (you have to become one with the machine). Please no fire, no fire. Shit. This hurts. Bloody bridge; own fault (yes, bloody bridge, right colour; see the man drive the car, see the man not see the other car, see the big CRASH, see the broken man bleed; blood the colour of bridge. Oh well own fault. Idiot).

The story then moves onto The Bridge, a humungous structure more like a small city, in which John Orr finds himself, with no memory of how he got there.  It's a wonderful construct - and I loved reading this whole section, in which John is attempting to find out any information at all about this surreal entity.

'Do you know that in this section alone they've - managed to lose - to lose - an entire library? A library! How the hell do you lose a library?'
Dr Joyce shrugs. 'Well, readers lose library books-' he begins in a reasonable voice. 

John is being haunted by visions on his TV of a man in a hospital intensive care unit, and strange beeping sounds on his telephone - so far, so Life on Mars (though this book predates that particular TV programme by two decades). But just when it's getting really interesting, we get hit with a whole chapter (12 pages) of pure Scottish (Glaswegian?) dialect:

It wiz this majishin that geez this thing, cald it a familyar soay did an it sits on ma showdder and gose jibber fukin jibber oll bludy day it gose. I cany stand the dam thing but am stuk with it I suppose an it wi me to, cumty think ov it.

I did read this chapter, but it took me quite a while to translate - many words are pretty obvious, but some of them really aren't.

 I skimmed through and soon found another whole chapter in the same style, so I quickly checked online and found this right at the beginning of a wiki review:
 'The Bridge is a novel by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. The book switches between three protagonists, John Orr, Alex, and the Barbarian. '


Guess who the Barbarian is? I'm sorry, but the thought of having to read several more chapters in a similar vein deterred me from reading any more. Which is a real shame, because I was nearly a third of the way through the book, way past p.60, my usual point of no return.

Unless someone can persuade me that it really is worth persevering with then I am abandoning this book. Oh dear, my first Did Not Finish of the year, and I've only read three books so far!

I'm sorry Mr Banks, I gave it my best shot.



Classics Challenge - Silas Marner by George Eliot

So, year after year, Silas Marner had lived in this solitude, his guineas rising in the iron pot, and his life narrowing and hardening itself more and more into a mere pulsation of desire and satisfaction that had no relation to any other being. His life had reduced itself to the mere functions of weaving and hoarding, without any contemplation of an end towards which the functions tended.

This is one of the books I'm reading for the Classics Challenge hosted by Katherine at November's Autumn. I chose this one because the only other book I've read by George Eliot is Middlemarch, and I decided it's about time I read another book by her. Plus this one is very short for a classic novel, only 214 pages long, which is always a bonus.

It's about a linen-weaver who has fled his old life after being framed for a crime he didn't commit, and now shuns and is shunned by society, valuing only his hoard of golden guineas. On the surface it's a deceptively simple story of how this deeply unattractive character gradually changes, and is finally redeemed through the only truly golden treasure, love, though he has to lose everything before that happens:

Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside, but now the casket was empty, the lock was broken.

Below the surface, other truths emerge, including one near the end, when Silas and his daughter go to visit Silas' previous residence - a Northern town which has greatly- expanded in the thirty or so years since he left. The visit is an attempt at 'closure'. Silas wants to see if his old congregation at Lantern Yard had ever realised/acknowledged their mistake in condemning him,  but there is no-one there, the chapel building has completely disappeared and is now the site of a factory. Despite the failure of this visit there is definitely a sense of closure at the end of the book  - Silas has been psychologically-healed and restored to the society he lives in now, his past life finally no longer matters, he is accepted just the way he is by the only people who mean anything to him.

I loved the details of village life and of the villagers in this novel - from the colourful denizens of the Rainbow pub to the Squire and his sons in the Red House - but what really struck me were the descriptions of religion. Silas Marner began his life as a fervent member of a narrow religious sect, a Christian one, yet he doesn't recognise any of the standard religious practices of a typical English country village church - christening has to be explained to him. Both religions are based on the same Bible, in the same country - but may as well be in different hemispheres.

This is a gem of a book. If you've never read anything by Ms Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans) before, this is a good one to start with.





Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

It began with my father not wanting to see the Last Rabbit, and ended up with me being eaten by a carnivorous plant. It wasn't really what I'd planned for myself. I'd hoped to marry into the Oxbloods and join their dynastic string empire. But that was four days ago, before I'd met Jane, retrieved the Caravaggio or explored High Saffron. So instead of enjoying aspirations of Chromatic advancement, I was wholly immersed within the digestive soup of a yateveo tree. It was all frightfully inconvenient. 

This dystopian, Huxleyan Brave New World is set hundreds of years in the future, where a rigid social hierarchy is enforced, one based solely on which colours and how much colour a person can perceive. The achromatic Greys are at the bottom of the pile doing all of the work, Purples are Top Dogs but Yellows are the most despised, Reds, Greens and Blues are roughly equal in the middle, and no-one knows where the Oranges really fit in. Eddie Russett is a Red sent to the Outer Fringes to learn Humility and count chairs, but instead ends up with his perception of the world lethally-enhanced. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing in a society governed by dictats such as 'Imaginative thought is to be discouraged. No good ever comes of it' (Munsell Book of Wisdom)

I'm a big fan of Fforde's Thursday Next series, and this completely new and different venture doesn't disappoint, though like The Eyre Affair it took me several chapters to really get into it. Partly because both fictional worlds are hugely complex, but I think the main stumbling block is that they are just so weirdly, wonderfully, bizarrely alternative it takes quite a while to adjust your mindset (see the introductory paragraph quoted above). Once you do, it all makes perfect sense!

This story is much darker than anything Thursday Next has to contend with. Shades of grey with a hint of Soylent Green, a 1984 with humour, it has a palpable sense of menace shallowly hidden beneath the surface. And this book is definitely the first of a series - the ending will leave you feeling completely Lincolned and desperate to continue following the Perpetulite road (Riff Raff, Mildew and Swans, oh my!). I can't wait for Shades of Grey 2: Painting By Numbers.





Books 2012

Charles Dickens



Another year, another stunningly-titled blogpost. Welcome to the booklist for 2012. If you're interested, this is last year's list.

I'm doing three challenges this year, one official one, a Classics Challenge in which I've promised to read seven books, my own What The Dickens! challenge, in which I've promised to read three of Dickens' novels plus at least one biography, and finally I'm continuing with my Library challenge - I'm going to try to get into double figures in the number of books I borrow from my local library this year (having only managed to borrow eight in 2011). I'm also going to try to write more actual reviews this year - I became quite lazy last year, and often just posted the introductory paragraph for many books, and never got round to writing up a full review (not that I write lengthy reviews anyway, they are deliberately kept pretty minimalist)

I'm also changing the codes I normally use next to my list. This year the following apply:

C = Classics Challenge  D = What The Dickens! Challenge   L = Library Challenge
  R = Re-Read

1. Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (Non-Fic)     D
2. Silas Marner by George Eliot      C
3. The Bridge by Iain Banks  DNF
4. Snuff by Terry Pratchett     L
5. Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (Bookclub)
6. Crossing Open Ground by Barry Lopez (Non-Fic)
7. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor
8. The End of Oil by Paul Roberts (Non-Fic)
9. Shirley by Charlotte Bronte C