Mini-reviews of all the books I read between July and the end of the year (yes, December was a bad month. I did read one book but it's not included here.)
NB reviews of mysteries may contain spoilers, so proceed with caution!
(22) Monday 7th July
The Sea Kingdoms
Alistair Moffat
Somewhere between a political manifesto, a history book, a travelogue
and a personal spiritual journey, this is a heartfelt and often entertaining
look at the history, traditions and culture of Britain’s Celtic fringe. Insofar
as the book has a central point, it’s this: there is – or at least was – a
distinct and very different way of viewing the world in Ireland, Cornwall,
Wales and the Highlands and islands of Scotland, which stood for many centuries
in opposition to the dominant English (and in Scotland, Lowland Scots) culture
and political structures. Moffat ranges over language and myth and history to
demonstrate this differentness and beauty of the Celtic way. There’s a lot here
to like, especially for someone like me who to some extent straddles the Celtic
and the English divide and loves empty wildernesses and slate-grey seas.
Particularly welcome are the reminders of the relative cosmopolitanism of the
Celtic cultures of the West and the extent of Scandinavian influence, and of
the history of non-English peoples in a time when I know the English history
rather well – but alongside the reminders of English perfidy, brutality and imperialism,
there is a certain amount of speculative anti-modern romanticism and some
rather tenuous conclusions. Moffat misunderstands, I think, the differences
between “Celtic” and “Roman” Christianity, especially in the pre-Whitby era.
Occasionally he is downright wrong – placing Augustine of Hippo in the sixth
century – and he gets very muddled up about what Pelagianism was and how it related
to other tensions and doctrinal currents in the early church. His treatment of
Christianity as a whole is rather unsatisfactory – several times he compares
Christian spirituality unfavourably with pre-Christian or early Christian
spirituality without really explaining what he means by either, and several
times notes with disapproval Christians’ attempts to curb Bacchanalian excess.
His vague and ever-so slightly New Age-y fondness for “Celtic spirituality” is
even more odd given that he provides detailed and gruesome descriptions of what
it often involved – druidical human sacrifice, for instance. I was irritated by
his attempt to relativise away the brutality and evil of older cultures with
the hoary old “we mustn’t judge them by our standards” get-out – the Vikings
were undoubtedly brave in crossing large oceans in small, unreliable boats, but
physical courage is not the only virtue, and it ceases to be a virtue in any
meaningful sense when put at the service of evil ends, such as murdering
unarmed civilians and destroying cultural artefacts. And Moffat is quite happy
to judge the English and their allies in oppression of the Celts by “modern
standards”!
Overall a great
book to read, and one I may return to, but not one I’d recommend without
reservation.
(23) Tuesday 8th July
The Doors Of The Sea: Where Was
God In The Tsunami?
David Bentley Hart
A reflection on theodicy (meta-theodicy?), questioning some of the
more inadequate and poorly-reasoned responses – both Christian and atheist – to
the immensely destructive Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004. He takes
particular aim at Calvinist and crypto-Calvinist accounts that make God the
direct author of pain and suffering, or collapse the distinction between what
God allows and what he wills, and he is very wary of complacent statements
about grand plans and higher purposes. But the lazy atheist response that
treats terrible suffering as an obvious disproof of God, as if Christians have
never struggled with the problem of evil before, also earns a fierce rebuke.
One particularly important theme is the extent to which the objection to
Christianity from evil is itself unintelligible without an essentially
Christian worldview. The central point is DBH’s insistence that there is evil
and wickedness and wrong and pain in the world because of Original Sin and that
those things are in opposition to God, that they were not part of the original
divine plan, and that they will be defeated one day. A book to return to and
think hard about, especially DBH’s discussion of the famous problems posed in The Brothers Karamazov.
(24) Saturday 12th July
Evangelical Catholicism: Deep
Reform In the 21st Century Church
George Weigel
Authoritative in tone and enormously wide-ranging and ambitious,
Weigel lays out an impressive manifesto for reform in the Church, based on what
he describes as “Evangelical Catholicism”. This is the name he gives to a
strong current within Catholicism that first emerged in the late nineteenth
century after the First Vatican Council, focused on engagement with modernity,
personal conversion, biblical literacy and radical Christ-focused
transformation. He contrasts this with “Counter-Reformation Catholicism” – the
Catholicism of the early modern period, which he argues was often strongly
clericalist, preoccupied with institutional strength and a rather legalistic
approach to catechetics, while hostile to other Christian groups and somewhat
theocratic in its political approach.
There is barely any part of the Church which
escapes his critical eye, from the sclerotic Curia, with its frustrating
Italian working practices (can it really be true that the Vatican works a 36-hour
6-day week?!), to the bureaucratic national bishops’ conferences who have lost
sight of what bishops are actually for and the millions of “baptised pagans”
let down by poor catechesis. He wants every part of the Church to be
streamlined for mission and proclamation and holiness. His remedies include better
homiletics training for priests, better selection processes for bishops and an
emphasis on the bishop as, above all, a teacher of the faith rather than an
administrator or “manager of the local franchise of Catholic, Inc.”, and an
emphasis on holy, Christ-focused individual Catholics. Some of the familiar
targets of conservative Catholics – publicly dissenting politicians, flaky
heretical nuns, the totalising liberal state – also come under (deservedly)
heavy fire. He links many of the problems with open dissent in the Church with
a lack of episcopal guts and determination. Interestingly he is not a Trad, and
is quite critical of any kind of nostalgic or restorationist Catholic
conservatism, arguing instead for the importance of beauty and reverence in the
Mass and in church design and for a constructive, critical approach to modernity
as part of the New Evangelisation.
In a sense, GW is preaching to the converted with
me. I agree that Catholic life needs more vitality and solid teaching, more
clarity and confidence in its mission, much less politics and worldliness in
its leadership, more beauty in its worship, and a stronger public policy focus
on those areas where the Church has a definite competence (although without
losing track of the *principles* that undergird the Church’s broader social and
economic teaching). Nevertheless, there is something in GW’s style that I don’t
get on with – possibly the lack of room in his vision for eirenic, diffident ways
of believing. And the scale of his proposed changes is intimidating.
(25) Sunday 13th July
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John Le Carre
A very fine book. Coming back to it I was impressed all over again by
the intricacy of the storytelling, the creation of atmosphere, the finely drawn
characters, and the depth of feeling at the heart of the plot. I also noticed,
in a way I don’t think I did last time, the strongly implied following of
Smiley by Jim Prideaux in the last days of the investigation (culminating in
Haydon’s murder), and the fact that Roach – the Thurgood’s boy that Prideaux
takes under his wing – has the Christian name “Bill”. I wish I could somehow
read it without knowing who the mole was, because it seems to me that it is
fairly clear over the course of the book, but I don’t know whether this is just
because I already know! JLC does allude to this at the end, of course, when
Smiley half-admits to himself that they had all, in some sense, known all
along.
(26) Wednesday 23rd July
Short Breaks in Mordor: Dawns
& Departures of a Scribbler’s Life
Peter Hitchens
Informative, well-written, amusing and thought-provoking essays from
the last two decades of Hitchens’ foreign reporting. The reports from Bhutan,
focusing on that country’s probably doomed attempts to resist the excesses of
modernity and globalisation, were a personal favourite, but I greatly enjoyed
reading PH’s views about China’s new and brutal imperialism in Africa and the
need to engage more constructively and calmly with Iran. Also striking to see
the change in his views on Russia – he has moved from being a New Cold Warrior,
of sorts, to being a defender of Russia’s traditional quasi-imperial
prerogatives in its sphere of influence. One quibble: reproducing dispatches
written for different publications (The
Mail on Sunday and The American
Spectator) but based on the same trip and the same experiences sometimes
leads to a slight feeling of sameness and repetition – though PH is a good
enough writer to avoid this most of the time.
(27) Tuesday 5th August
The Fellowship Of The Ring
JRR Tolkien
This remains a wonderful book, probably my favourite of the LOTR
trilogy. There is so much here, such a beautifully realised world full of
wisdom and enchantment and strangeness. The gradual move from the quasi-Edenic
seclusion of The Shire to the dangerous and uncertain world beyond its borders
– and the accompanying realisation that its quiet rustic complacency is bought
at a great price by others – works very well. I was also reminded of how well
Tolkien describes a very old world, full of ruins, legends, half-remembered
lore and sinister, haunted landscapes.
(28) Monday 18th August
Died In The Wool
Ngaio Marsh
A country house mystery with a twist, viz. the country house in
question is on an isolated upland sheep station in rural New Zealand, and has
no mains electricity. Not perhaps a particularly complex or interesting
mystery, but a splendidly atmospheric and enjoyable one, and explicitly
anchored in a particular time (mid-1943) which adds to the sense of immersion
in the story. The method of disposal of the body is almost comically gruesome,
to the extent that I wonder whether NM – whose novels often have a slightly
arch tone – might even be poking a bit of gentle fun at the excesses and conventions
of the detective story. This is a distant cousin of Christie’s Five Little Pigs, with a murder in the
past being recalled by a small circle of witness-suspects, but doesn’t have
quite the depth and interest of that tale. Marsh is perhaps more formulaic and
less inventive plot-wise than AC, but within those limitations she crafts very
fine stories, with a humour and verve that AC often lacks. I’m still not
entirely sure about Alleyn as a character – he can seem a little
two-dimensional. I also wonder whether making the murder an essentially
political rather a personal one is stretching the “rules” a bit.
(29) Friday 22nd August
Dead Water
Ngaio Marsh
A great idea for a setting: a spring near a sleepy fishing village
somewhere on the south coast (I think it’s supposed to be Dorset or Devon, to
judge by the accents of the rustics!) is the site of a seemingly miraculous
cure of a young boy’s warts, and as a result becomes a kind of shrine, a
cut-price Lourdes, with dangerous consequences. But it didn’t feel like NM
really did justice to the set-up. The murder itself is quite pedestrian, and
not exactly an impenetrable problem after the absolutely honking great clue
that NM helpfully provides about four-fifths of the way through. One or two
interesting plot threads just peter out and/or aren’t properly explored. The
whole story feels a bit procedural and under-powered, and the portrait of rural
life is rather hackneyed – e.g. the terribly nice but impoverished vicar and
his terribly nice wife, and the stupid yokels. I’d have liked a bit more depth
in exploring some of the wider themes – faith and healing and religion and
disrupted community.
(30) Sunday 24th August
Death At The Dolphin
Ngaio Marsh
Another of Marsh’s theatrical mysteries, and another slight
disappointment. This sticks closely to the Marsh formula of fairly long and
slightly outlandish set-up – baroque death – detailed account of interviewing
the suspects – a few further developments – Alleyn’s revelation of the killer.
That’s not to say it’s not well-written and enjoyable (and funny in parts), but
the denouement has a slightly unsatisfactory feel and the plot, clueing and
detection are relatively uninspiring. If I were being pernickety, I might wonder
whether the central killing is really a murder, rather than a flukey
manslaughter. I like my whodunit murders premeditated and planned.
(31) Wednesday 27th August
Pietr The Latvian
Georges Simenon
My first Maigret, and a very enjoyable read. It’s not a whodunit in
the English tradition – it’s really more of a mystery thriller, and has echoes
of the “hardboiled” American style – but Maigret is an instantly likeable and
vividly drawn character, a bulky, dogged, amiable detective who likes a pipe, a
pint and a sandwich (indeed, the image of him that formed in my mind bore a
striking resemblance to GKC). The story here is engrossing, and even sad in
some ways.
(32) Friday 5th September
The Forgotten Victory: The First
World War Myths And Realities
Gary Sheffield
Brisk and readable revisionist account of the First World War. It’s
revisionist in the sense that he questions many of the ingrained popular
assumptions about the war – that Britain needn’t have fought, that the anti-war
poets were/are an accurate reflection of veterans’ attitudes to the war, that
it was the result of historical forces rather than individual decisions, that
the Germans were not beaten in the field, and above all that the British Army
were “lions led by donkeys”. Sheffield shows quite convincingly that the war
was largely Germany’s fault, and makes a powerful argument against the “Better
Off Out” position (to which I am sympathetic), on the grounds that Britain had
a long-standing strategic interest in the independence and freedom of the Low
Countries and France, and a moral imperative to resist the belligerence of a
militaristic and quasi-authoritarian Germany.
The majority of
the book is taken up with a well-argued and determined, though necessarily qualified,
defence of the BEF’s conduct of the war on the Western Front, from the largely
well-conducted (if costly) fighting retreats of 1914, through what GS calls the
“steep learning curve” of the resulting years of trench warfare, to the
repulsing of the Ludendorff Offensive and the subsequent skilfully led and
executed counter-attacks in summer 1918. GS tries to set the record straight on
Haig and his generals, arguing that while they were sometimes slow to adapt to
the new conditions of warfare, they were not the cruel and unfeeling butchers
of legend (I have read elsewhere that more than 200 British generals were
killed in action in the war, which supports GS’s critique of the “cowering in
their chateaux” line). He gives numerous examples of tactical innovation and
flexibility by the BEF and its commanders, with a particular emphasis on the
significant advances made in “all-arms” integration, and notes that even
battles like the Somme and Passchendaele, held up as icons of futile and
wasteful carnage, were not entirely unsuccessful.
(33) Thursday 11th September
The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab
Fergus Hume
An early whodunit (published 1886), from a time when the detective genre
was apparently still finding its feet and separating from the “sensation” novel
so beloved of Victorian audiences. For my money, it hasn’t dated well. There
are some interesting scenes of detection early on, and the murder mystery is
neat (if not spectacular), but there is some rather purple prose and the more
irritating conventions of late Victoriana are present and correct, as are tiresome
sub-Dickensian working class characters. There is something almost comically OTT
about their portrayal as stupid, brutish or squalid, and I could have done
without so much phonetic rendering of their speech. The real problem, I think,
is that the whodunit element is underdeveloped, and swamped by an overwritten
and not very interesting “romantic” subplot. The Brave Young Hero Risking The
Noose rather than hurt his Sweet Innocent Fiancée by revealing An Awful Secret
is a pretty hackneyed trope, and the awful secret has to be pretty juicy to
justify all the swooning and struggling for self-mastery on the verandah.
This “awful” secret is as follows: the fiancee’s widower
father was an accidental and entirely innocent bigamist, because he had been
lied to about the supposed death of his first wife and her child. Moreover, the
Sweet Innocent Fiancee – also, of course, an heiress – has a half-sister who is,
of all the terrible fates to befall a person, working-class.
Ho, and indeed hum.
The fact that the murder revolves around this
ludicrous melodrama does not help with the suspension of one’s disbelief. Needless
to say, the working-class half-sister is redeemed by her social betters, and
the Sweet Innocent Fiancee is never told about the half-sister because it is,
for some reason, Better That She Never Know; having to face a complicated but
hardly unresolvable real-life situation might melt her delicate feminine brain
or something.
(34) Wednesday 17th September
The Red Thumb Mark
R Austin Freeman
Strong echoes of Sherlock Holmes in this atmospheric Edwardian
detective story about the barrister and forensic specialist Dr John Thorndyke
and his friend/assistant Dr Jervis. The plot is simple: a bloody thumbprint at
the scene of a jewel theft appears to incriminate a particular person, even
though he seems a very unlikely candidate, and Thorndyke sets out to prove his
innocence. The appeal of the tale is largely in Thorndyke’s approach to
detection: Holmesian reasoning coupled with scientific knowledge and expertise.
The slightly overwrought romantic sub-plot between Dr Jervis and the supposed
inamorata of the wrongfully accused man doesn’t add much (as usual, the female
characters are poorly drawn and one-dimensional), and the lack of suspense and
depth in the answer to the question “who actually
did it?” is a bit disappointing. That said, it’s well-written and I like the
characters, even if they do feel a little derivative of Holmes and Watson.
(35) Thursday 18th September
The Mystery of 31 New Inn
R Austin Freeman
Well-constructed, well-clued mystery featuring Thorndyke and Jervis. Two
initially separate stories gradually become entwined. This is a very
entertaining read, with lots of clever detail and atmospheric toing and froing
across London. I wasn’t a million miles from solving the mystery but hadn’t
quite managed to set out everything in my head!
(36) Saturday 20th September
The Wolf’s Lair: Inside Hitler’s
Germany
Roger Moorhouse
Short eBook of essays on various aspects of Nazi Germany – a rather
interesting discussion of Hitler’s Eastern Front HQ at Rastenburg, its history,
its size, the way it symbolised Hitler’s physical and metaphorical dislocation
from the reality of the Second World War; a potted biography of Alfred
Naujocks, the SD man who led the Gleiwitz raid (and participated in the Venlo
operation) but later fell into disgrace; the story of the S-Bahn murderer, a
Berlin serial killer; a discussion of the significance of the Wannsee
conference, including a sometimes hard-to-read discursus on what and when Germans
knew about the Holocaust; a rather odd little revisionist piece questioning the
traditional view of Staufffenberg as “the good German”; and an enlightening
look at the Germania architecture
programme planned by Speer and Hitler. Mostly excellent vignettes, exploring
areas about which I didn’t know very much. The Stauffenberg chapter feels like
the weakest, straining too hard for revisionist impact and confused about what
it’s trying to demonstrate.
(37) Thursday 2nd October
The Two Towers
JRR Tolkien
Hugely enjoyable second instalment of the trilogy. The reader is
immersed more and more deeply in Middle Earth, and in the struggles and
conflicts and tensions thereof. The second half of the book, focusing on Frodo
and Sam’s struggles to reach Mordor with Gollum as their guide, is particularly
good, and the way in which JRRT explores sin and corruption and innocence and
trust and forgiveness is clever and subtle. One scene that I don’t remember
noticing before – in which the mistrustful Sam interrupts a moment of genuine
moral clarity and even repentance for Gollum, thus losing an opportunity for
redemption forever – is very insightful and sad.
(38) Wednesday 15th October
The Nursing Home Murder
Ngaio Marsh
Back to Marsh. A very strong and intriguing start, involving the death
of Sir Derek O’Callaghan on the operating table. Unfortunately it doesn’t
finish as well as it started. The red-herring Bolshies from A Man Lay Dead are still cluttering up
the place. There’s not a great deal in the way of clueing, and making the
murderer a madman seems a little bit of a cop-out (and is surely against the
rules of the Golden Age!) – although a crazed eugenicist bumping off imperfect
specimens is a nice little dig at the eugenics movement which was still very
fashionable when this was published in 1935.
(39) Wednesday 22nd October
Death In Ecstasy
Ngaio Marsh
Once again we have a deliciously baroque murder, almost self-parodic
in its rococo improbability – someone drops poison into the chalice during a
bizarre cultic “communion” ceremony. This is another fun read, never taking
itself too seriously and with some very sparky dialogue amid the traditional
Marsh formula. But it must be said that there’s not a lot of substance to the
central mystery, and one can’t help but feel that Christie or Sayers might have
made a bit more of it. That said, this isn’t really Christie’s world, with its peculiar
religious cults, relatively frank discussion of sex, and its focus on young(ish),
single bohemians from the London middle class.
(40) Sunday 26th October
Vintage Murder
Ngaio Marsh
Enjoyable New Zealand-set mystery involving a travelling theatre
company and murder by a too-rapidly descending Jeroboam of champers. Although
it sticks pretty closely to the Marsh formula, this is an above-average Alleyn
story, with good background, very fair clueing, some well-written and
thoughtful scenes, and colourfully drawn characters. NM obviously loved and
knew both NZ and the theatre, and only occasionally does a character feel
ridiculous (the ripe old ham in the twilight of his career and the ex-actor
doorman with a vast store of anecdote sailed close to the wind in this
respect).
(41) Thursday 30th October
Death In A White Tie
Ngaio Marsh
A high society murder this time, with an affable old peer rather
gruesomely suffocated by a blackmailer in a cab on the way home from a debs’
ball. A more than usually affecting murder; the victim was well-drawn and for a
short time at the centre of the narrative, with the reader given access to his
thoughts and feelings and insights and fears. Cleverly and fairly clued; a close
and moderately imaginative reading would enable you to identify the killer, I
think. NM is on sprightly form and there are some good scenes of character
development, especially with Lady Alleyn and Agatha Troy (although her romantic
scenes with RA have more than a hint of Mills & Boonery). There is an
entertainingly described bounder as well, although his unpleasantness is laid
on a bit too thick – certainly too thick for there to be any chance that he is
the murderer.
On the downside, it feels like too much time is
devoted to typically Marshesque detailed questioning. Such inquisition can feel
rather schematic, with its focus on who was doing what, where, when and with
whom. NM’s habitual reluctance or inability to pull rabbits out of hats re.
motive or methods is also on display here, which detracts a little from the drama
of the denouement. The solution itself bends, and perhaps even breaks, The
Rules by making two of the major suspects accomplices. Also, I have a low
tolerance threshold for Awful Secrets From The Long-Dead Past that turn out not
to be very awful after all (cf. The
Mystery Of A Hansom Cab).
(42) Saturday 8th November
The Return Of The King
JRR Tolkien
The key part of ROTK might just be the Scouring Of The Shire. Yes, it
is a brief episode, seemingly a footnote to the defeat of Sauron and the
resolution of the main business of the trilogy. But seen another way, it’s a
chance for several of Tolkien’s key themes to play out.
It’s about the ambiguities of homecoming. It’s
about the wrecking of a time-hallowed way of life by ugly, unthinking
industrialism. It’s about the way in which small-scale evil, spite and
pettiness and cowardice and the desire to boss people around, can wreak havoc.
Over the course of the trilogy, JRRT never quite resolves the tension between
different understandings of where the evil power of the ring comes from;
whether it is evil in itself, or whether the power it offers merely draws out
the potential for evil within people. My own instinct is that he believes both
are true, but that the latter is more true, and the SOTS is certainly an illustration
of the potential for wickedness from people who are bullying and loutish, or
weak, rather than monstrous. The SOTS also illustrates the ongoing nature of
the fight against evil, and the vulnerability of quiet, peaceable people to the
strong and the malevolent, to say nothing of the way in which the virtues of
quiet, peaceable people can easily become vices when the need to confront
wickedness arises. Then of course there is the tension between Merry, Sam and
Pippin’s determination to fight fire with fire, and Frodo’s war-weariness and
impatience with violence. JRRT is sympathetic to both impulses, I suspect, and
gives each a fair hearing. In the background of the SOTS lurk other questions too,
noticeably about the dangers of going off on adventures to fight evils far
away.
The book itself
is a fine end to LOTR. The fact that it is Gollum who eventually ensures the
destruction of the Ring is both dramatically and thematically satisfying,
vindicating the characters’ merciful attitude to him and striking a blow for
trusting in goodness when it seems ludicrous and dangerous to do so. Sauron’s
power is defeated, but not without cost. As Frodo says towards the end, “[the
Shire] has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things
are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep
them”. The story of Frodo’s inability to truly return to normal life symbolises
all those for whom the defeat of Sauron came at a very great price. The tragedy
of Frodo’s alienation from the thing that he loves, that he saved, has strong
resonances of the stories of returning soldiers all down the centuries (and of
course JRRT was once himself a soldier coming back to a much-changed and
much-disturbed home country). For me, the end of ROTK touches on the idea that
the great human desire for home, for return, for what we once knew, is the
reflection and echo of a greater and deeper need, for final reconciliation and
entry into a heavenly home. Frodo comes home to the Shire, but he must
eventually seek a truer Home – the Undying Lands.
(43) Wednesday 12th November
The Lost Stradivarius
JM Falkner
Old-fashioned and very compelling tragic ghost story in the grand
Victorian/Edwardian tradition, slow-burning and understated but with some
genuinely chilling moments. I struggled initially with a couple of points. One
of these was the narrative style – the book is framed as a long letter to a boy
from his dead father’s sister, and often depends on her narrating in the third
person, and in some detail, events which she did not personally witness (with
the explanation that she is reproducing detailed accounts given to her by
others). But I swiftly overcame that, and was also able to ignore the besetting
sin of many novelists of the time, i.e. weak and uninteresting female
characters.
On the whole this
is a splendid tale. A clever and unsettling idea, capitalising on the strange
power of music to move, captivate and corrupt, and with a deep sadness at its
heart, like many great ghost stories. Even the Gothic clichés, such as a scary
old portrait and the journey to the debased and seedy Latin world resulting in
physical and spiritual sickness, do not detract from the plot. The symbolism of
character names – Maltravers (French “bad crossing”?), Sophia (“wisdom”),
Constance etc. – isn’t too laboured. The Oxford of the early Victorian period
is well portrayed, although as ever in novels set in that city this is a
particular Oxford – a rather lonely, spooky autumnal one.
The portrayal of Neo-platonic mysticism as dark and
sinister is perhaps overdone and misconceived, but the decayed paganism which
forms the main force for evil is well and sparingly evoked, and the opposition
between that esoteric, sensuous paganism and the simple, wholesome austerity of
Anglicanism is a powerful theme. I suppose I ought to defend Mediterranean Catholicism
against its portrayal here as a sensuous fellow-traveller with the sinister
pre-Christian forces, but it works very well dramatically and there is an
element of truth to it. It might certainly have seemed alien and decadent to
Anglicans in the 1840s.
(44) Wednesday 19th November
The Nebuly Coat
JM Falkner
Somewhere between a Thomas Hardy novel, an MR James ghost story, an
early whodunit, and an Austenesque satirical comedy of manners (now there’s a
Venn diagram to conjure with). I very much enjoyed it eventually – a
slow-building but gripping story. A priggish young architect arrives in an
isolated cathedral town in Dorset to supervise the restoration of a vast old
minster, and becomes embroiled in a mystery concerning the local landowner,
Lord Blandamer. Very well-crafted, with a few genuinely frightening moments and
some clever authorial tricks. The claustrophobia, meanness, hypocrisy and
prurience than can mark small town life is sharply observed and entertainingly
satirised, and the odd and spooky atmosphere is well-evoked (it’s not always
easy to convey a sense of near-supernatural dread without any actual portrayal
of the supernatural). I appreciated Falkner’s decision not to tie up all the
loose ends, which added to the overall sense of strangeness, and the deliberate
ambiguity about the death of one character is well done and adds to the
suspense of the climax. I’m slightly in two minds about how well the book ends,
but willing to give JMF the benefit of the doubt. There’s even a genuinely
interesting and complex female character, although her story isn’t really
resolved.
(45) Friday 21st November
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Herman Melville
What a funny little short story this is. The narrator, a New York
lawyer, takes on a copyist (the eponymous Bartleby), only to find himself
entirely baffled by the man’s behaviour. He works hard but refuses to do
anything except copy, declining any request or attempt at conversation with
some variation on the words “I would prefer not to”. He remains silent and
inscrutable, apparently living in the office and refusing to leave even when
the narrator moves to different premises. Eventually he is removed to prison
and even there refuses all conversation – and food. A little later, he dies,
and no explanation of his behaviour is forthcoming. What are we meant to make
of this tale? Is a parable about madness, or illness? Is Bartleby a
hallucination or a metaphor for something? The narrator finds just one clue to
Bartleby’s behaviour – his former role at the Dead Letter Office, dealing with
mail that was addressed to deceased people. From this he tentatively
hypothesises that Bartleby has been overwhelmed by the weight of grief and
sadness and futility. Is that where the clue to the mystery lies? Other
analysts, apparently, focus on the considerable peculiarity of the narrator’s
own behaviour, or on the absurdist symbolism of Bartleby’s extreme assertion of
individual will.
(46) Tuesday 25th November
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
It’s not great literature, but then it’s not pretending to be, and it
is a superb example of the exciting techno-thriller. The apotheosis of the
airport novel. A well-researched and entertaining story that rattles along at a
great pace.
(47) Friday 28th November
The Lost World
Michael Crichton
I’d forgotten that this is a bit disappointing, as you might expect
from a sequel that was supposedly written with some reluctance, to tie in with
a film. It’s diverting and the story unfolds entertainingly enough, but there’s
a lot of plot-driven recklessness – downright idiocy, even – which strains the
suspension of disbelief to breaking point, and so spoiled my enjoyment. People
acting foolishly or irrationally in
extremis I can accept, but there are a ludicrous number of “unforced
errors” here that exist only to push the story onwards.
Why didn’t anyone bring decent, or sufficient,
weapons? Might Malcolm not have queried the decision to put the trailers near
the top of a 500-foot cliff given his experiences with the rex on Isla Nublar?
Indeed, it’s never quite clear why he comes to the island at all. Would Dodgson
really have come to the island with such a small and badly equipped team? (The
film version of The Lost World has
its own problems, but its expansion of this expedition is an improvement on the
book). Would anyone really have thought it was a good idea to take a baby T-rex
from its nest, let alone keep it in the trailer to fix its leg? Would Levine
really have thought that he and Diego could survive on the island? How did he
do so for some time while merrily cycling through the jungle after T-rexes?
What was his plan for getting off the island? Is it remotely plausible that no-one
anticipated that a high hide barely fifteen feet off the ground might not be
completely impregnable to predators (these people are all supposedly highly
intelligent, remember)? Why didn’t they keep any weapons in the hide? Would
anyone really have dropped litter from the hide in so cavalier a fashion under
the circumstances?
The death of
Eddie “redshirt” Carr is very predictable, and the fact that he is both (a) the
only goody to get eaten, and (b) the only blue-collar, non-academically
brilliant adult on the goodies’ team, leaves a bad taste in the mouth. A propos
of which, some of Malcolm’s long discourses on maths/philosophy/evolutionary theory
seem even more extraneous and heavy-handed than in the original. It doesn’t
help that he is, once again, delivering them while high on morphine having been
badly injured by a T-rex.
No comments:
Post a Comment