Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry

I recently finished reading Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. It’s quite a book: intelligent, sad, rambling, long and intense. In fact, if the analogy is not too obscure, reading it is a bit like walking up a mountain in the fading light; you are aware of glimpses of beauty here and there, yet it is hard to ever forget the imposing darkness and great weight of your pack bearing down on you. Yes, that’s the kind of book this is.

The tale is undoubtedly a sad one: it focuses on the last day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, the drunken British ex-consul in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac, as he drinks himself into oblivion.

The first chapter is set one year on from the main events of the novel, and so introduces some of the characters and sets the scene a little. Then the rest of the novel charts the events of Geoffrey Firmin’s last day – which, rather fittingly, happens to coincide with the local fiesta known as “The Day of the Dead”. This kind of symbolism is used a fair amount in the novel, which is in part an exploration into the spiritual struggle that Geoffrey faces. Being deeply depressed, Geoffrey lacks the strength to try and change himself, rather choosing to passively accept whatever happens to him, abdicating personal responsibility in favour of a semi-mystic, semi-lazy fatalism.

Although Firmin’s life is clearly in a mess, a faint ray of hope appears when his estranged wife turns up, on a mission to save him from himself. Then there is Firmin’s brother too and other friends, all wanting to help him escape from his severe drunkenness and depression and start re-building his life. However, theirs are not the only voices that he hears when deep in his mescal-soaked haze.

Although not an easy read by any measure (trying to follow pages and pages of Firmin’s drunken ramblings is no mean feat), this is a stark and powerful book. Being a true tragedy, I wouldn’t say I especially enjoyed reading it, however it is thought-provoking and Geoffrey and Yvonne Firmin are certainly characters that I am unlikely to forget.

But what was the use of a will if you had no faith? This indeed, she saw now, was also Yvonne Griffaton’s problem. This was what she too was seeking, and had been all the time, in the face of everything, for some faith – as if one could find it like a new hat or a house for rent! – yes, even what she was now on the point of finding, and losing, a faith in a cause, was better than none.

If you like this, you may also enjoy: Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

I’ve been reading a few non-fiction books again recently, which in and of themselves were good, however, as usual, I found that I was yearning for the richness of prose and the enjoyment of language that I only seem to find in a good novel. So, whilst still finishing a couple of non-fiction books, I headed towards our ‘novel’ bookshelves in search for a quick fix…
I wanted something fairly small and easy to read yet something that had real style to its narrative. What I plumped for in the end, was Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, a book I’d first read five years ago.

As sombre as the title and indeed the main plot line undoubtedly is, this is a hugely readable and, I have to admit, immensely enjoyable feast of a novel.

For me, the whole appeal and attraction of the book is its intriguing, unique and wry narrative style. It is dark yet humourous, sad but also fun, highly nostalgic and often quite poignant. Here is the opening paragraph, which gives a taste of what it is like:

On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide – it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese – the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope. They got out of the EMS truck, as usual moving much too slowly in our opinion, and the fat one said under his breath, “This ain’t TV, folks, this is how fast we go.” He was carrying the heavy respirator and cardiac unit past the bushes that had grown monstrous and over the erupting lawn, tame and immaculate thirteen months earlier when the trouble began.

In fact, its narrative voice is unlike any other that I can think of in that it is told from the first person plural perspective – that is, it is narrated by a collection of men who are looking back to their shared childhoods, growing up in the same neighbourhood as the five doomed Lisbon girls. This strange narrative perspective gives the book an otherworldly feel, as the boys/men discuss various ‘artifacts’ relating to the five girls they were all so enchanted by.

If you like this, you may also enjoy: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, or The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath or Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov.

White Teeth – Zadie Smith

Hm, weeks have passed again since I last updated this blog. So, time for another quick update…

A few weeks back I decided to read Zadie Smith’s much acclaimed White Teeth. This was Zadie Smith’s first novel and was published when she was only 24 years old. Having read some of the hype surrounding the book previously and then having read the pages of praise inside the front cover, I was looking forward to something very literary, very contemporary and very wonderfully clever.

So what did I find?

Well, a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest.

Yes, it is a sprawling, colourful, postmodern tale packed with a bright assortment of characters. Yes, it explores themes of heritage, multiculturalism, the differences between generations, cultural stereotypes, and the state of modern Britain. Yes, it is well written in parts. And yes, it made me smile on occasions.

(Can you feel a “but” coming…?) But, I have to say I was not blown away by this book.

Zadie Smith is clearly a talented writer and whilst some sections were very intelligently written and well crafted (for example, I thought the way the various strands come together at the end of the book was very well done),  I still found other sections of the narrative pretty uninspiring to be honest.

Another issue I struggled with throughout the novel was the fact that I simply didn’t care much for any of the characters. Now maybe this just highlights some failing of sympathy on my part, but try as I might to engage with the different characters, they all seemed to be portrayed as small-minded, selfish and often fairly ridiculous, and there was little in the narrative that elicited in me much interest or sympathy for any of them.

The novel also seemed to offer conflicting messages on several of the key themes. Now maybe this is all part of a clever post-modern ploy to refuse to offer any neat, simple synthesis of complex issues, in order to challenge the reader in his thinking. However, it felt at times more like sloppy editing, to be honest. Here are a couple of quotations from the end of the book, as an example of the divergent views expressed:

In a vision, Irie has seen a time, a time not far from now, when roots won’t matter any more because they can’t because they mustn’t because they’re too long and they’re too tortuous and they’re just buried too damn deep. She looks forward to it.

Likewise, the brothers will race towards the future only to find they more and more eloquently express their past, that place where they have just been. Because this is the other thing about immigrants (‘fugees, émigrés, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lost your shadow.

I’ve perhaps been a little harsh in my review, as this is not a bad book by any means; it just didn’t meet my expectations.  I would cerainly still be interested in trying another of Zadie Smith’s books in the future.

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

I’ve had several people over the last few years tell me that I really must read David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, so I thought I would follow their advice and see what all the fuss was about.

The first thing to say is that this is a big book – not just in terms of number of pages, but also in terms of its scope and breadth of genres. The novel has a very ambitious structure: it comprises six separate stories, with each one being split in half and nested within the others, rather like the way Russian dolls are nested within one another. Plus each story is set in a different time-frame, with its own set of characters and unique narrative style. So we end up reading in the one book, a mid-nineteenth century sea voyage,  a thriller, a modern comedy, a science fiction tale and a post-apocalyptic story. And each one is interrupted, mid-flow by one of the others. It’s an interesting idea and – surprisingly – it works.

Admittedly the constant shifting from one tale (and genre) to another does not exactly make for easy reading, but each piece is certainly well-formed and intriguing enough to keep you reading. I especially enjoyed Letters from Zedelghem and The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, both of which I wanted to continue.

This is a bold, strong and impressive novel. I would certainly be interested to see what David Mitchell’s other novels are like.

One Day – David Nicholls

I cannot honestly remember how I came by this novel, but I found it snugly sat on my book shelf, so thought I’d see what it was like.

Our protagonists, Dexter and Emma, meet on the night of their graduation (St. Swithin’s Day, if you must know) and a relationship of sorts develops. The  novel then charts this relationship and their respective lives over the next twenty years, St. Swithin’s Day, by St. Swithin’s Day.  This is a perfectly good narrative device and it is well executed here.

As the novel is essentially a romance, there is naturally much love, pain and laughter along the way. The other thing I must stress is just how funny – genuinely funny – the novel is. That is to say, whilst the content can sometimes be sad or bleak, the dialogue is laced with dry wit and rye observations, especially from Emma. Here is one example (and there are many, many such musings throughout the book):

What are you going to do with your life?” In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer… “Live each day as if it’s your last’, that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn’t practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.

So, whilst I was not expecting an awful lot from the book when I started, I was pleasantly impressed and think this is very good and very enjoyable contemporary fiction. It strikes a pleasing balance between chronicling both the more trivial and the more poignant moments of life and also offers a decent mixture of hard-nosed cynicism and soft-hearted hope. Plus, as I mentioned above, I found it to be a very funny read.

She glanced at the other diners, all of them going into their act, and thought is this what it all boils down to? Romantic love, is this all it is, a talent show?

A very enjoyable read.