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 "J" - HOWARD JACOBSON
Howard Jacobson’s “J” shifts from the contemporary London Jewish
world of “The Finkler Question”, which won the Booker Prize in
2010, to a dystopian setting around 60 years in the future. But
the questions of identity and assimilation remain.
Ailinn Solomons and Kevern “Coco” Cohen are having a slightly
on-off love affair in the bleak coastal town of Port Reuben.
Kevern was brought up there but has never felt at home in a
place where men are routinely violent to their women, and the
only entertainment is to get drunk in the “Friendly Fisherman.”
At home, he has carried on his father’s puzzling habit of
putting two fingers across his lips whenever he says the letter
‘J’.
Ailinn is an orphan from another part of this country, where
everyone has surnames like theirs or with endings like –kind or
–berg, and the population, lacking in culture or much sign of
industry, is required to say sorry for "what happened, if it
happened". It seems like the two of them are destined to be
together. Or is that just part of somebody else’s plan?
It’s a slow-burning novel, with some brutal humor as an escape
from a landscape of ugliness and despair, in which secondary
characters have few redeeming qualities. But the plot gains
twists as the story progresses, and it’s not all grim – Jacobson
captures tenderness and love too, alongside a dissection of the
feelings that lead to hatred.
(Carolyn Cohn, Insurance and Fund Management Correspondent)
"THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH" - RICHARD FLANAGAN
In "The Narrow Road to the Deep North," the Australian novelist
Richard Flanagan takes up the familiar story of Allied prisoners
of war building the Siam-Burma railway line during World War
Two.
His protagonist is Dorrigo Evans, a doctor and a soldier in the
Australian army who is taken prisoner on Java, presumably in
1942. Pinning down exactly what happens when in the novel can be
difficult, because Flanagan chops up his narrative and hops back
and forth in time. Consequently, he often tells us effects
before he shows us their causes, which can be entertaining in a
Quentin Tarantino film but is annoying in a novel.
The disjointed narrative is mostly notable for what it doesn't
include: the surrender by the Allied troops, any fighting they
might have done before surrendering, most of the actual work on
the railway and the end of the war, for example. It also skips
over Evans's marriage after the war, the birth of his children
or their names or sexes. It doesn't even give us much detail
about the most important event of Evans's pre-war life, a brief
affair with Amy, unloving wife of Evans's uncle.
Flanagan's work is a self-consciously "literary" novel that has
no plot to speak of. Its characters are sketched only in outline
and we are more often told how they feel about something than
shown how they acted while it was happening.
(Larry King, Desk Editor)
"HOW TO BE BOTH" - ALI SMITH
Ali Smith’s “How to be Both” contains the twin stories of George
and Francescho, one a teenager of the 1960s, the other a young
artist in 15th century Ferrara, joined by a single thread that
spans the centuries. The story is cleverly divided into two
parts, both titled “One”, that can be read in either order. The
chapter devoted to painter Francescho del Cossa bursts into a
rushing stream of consciousness, that gradually catches its
breath and slows into punctuated prose, as his memories become
more lucid and fall into place.
Del Cossa existed. The son of a stone carver, much of his work
at Ferrara in northern Italy has been destroyed and his main
surviving works are frescoes painted after 1470. In Smith’s
narrative, he must balance his public identity, with his private
– that of a girl disguised as a boy to pursue a life in art.
George, in her leaking bedroom in Cambridge, is struggling to
come to terms with the sudden death of her mother months before,
alongside her bereft father and a younger brother. Her story
flits between the present day and the memories of a trip to
Ferrara with her art-loving mother. The book describes itself as
a literary double-take, in which present and past, fact and
fiction, appearance and reality, life and death swirl around
each other. Time, space, perspective and even gender overlap and
multiple realities intertwine to form the fabric of a vibrant,
engaging story.
(Amanda Cooper, Editor, Global Markets Forum)
"TO RISE AGAIN AT A DECENT HOUR" - JOSHUA FERRIS
Can you choose your spiritual path? Or are you chosen for it? Is
doubt more powerful than belief? Joshua Ferris's tight,
theological thriller "To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" mulls a
number of these fundamental questions. It answers one,
unequivocally: Yes, it is certainly better to floss.
[to top of second column] |
 For all his neuroses and ill-advised escapades, Dr Paul
O'Rourke can be trusted on this point of preventative care. The
40-year-old obsessive baseball fan, on whom Ferris centers his
novel, is a Manhattan dentist. He makes lots of money from his
posh practice, but something is missing. Prematurely
curmudgeonly, O'Rourke is a man forever on the outside looking
in. An avowed atheist, he craves acceptance and belonging and
bizarrely seeks it through an over-enthusiastic embracing of
girlfriends' religions. First the Catholic Santacroces, then
Connie Plotz and her large Jewish family.
When, still giddy with anesthetic, a man O'Rourke has treated
lurches from the building, leaving the dentist with the parting news
that he too is an "Ulm" – a member of an underground group whose
history can be traced back to the early Israelites - the book
teeters over the edge of the rollercoaster.
After 40 years of searching for belonging, O’Rourke’s people have
come to reclaim him, and what follows is a fireman's hose of
hysteria, identity theft, paralyzing rejection of 21st century
technology, and dynamic interplay between the workers at the
surgery. Meandering and lengthy detail on the history of the "Ulms"
and the "Amalekites" touch the brakes on Ferris's narrative, but the
author's gift for characterization and crackling dialogue override
this.
(Ossian Shine, Global Editor: Sport, Lifestyle and Entertainment)
"WE ARE ALL COMPLETELY BESIDE OURSELVES" - KAREN JOY FOWLER
"Skip the beginning," the weary father of the talkative protagonist
of Karen Joy Fowler's "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves"
advises. "Start in the middle." And she does, beginning this
haunting, often whimsical narrative 17 years after the event on
which the book hinges - the disappearance of her sister and
companion, Fern. Other reviewers have warned of spoilers, and
spoiler risk is high indeed. There is a twist - a very good one - on
page 77.
But the book is about more than the intriguing reveal (about which
this reviewer, at least, will keep silent). Rosemary Cooke, the
protagonist and engaging narrator of the tale, is the daughter of an
Indiana University professor who brings his work home, filling the
farmhouse with experiments, blackboards and graduate students.
Part-inspired, no doubt, by Fowler's own father, a psychologist at
the same university who, she says, "ran rats through mazes".
It ends, perhaps predictably, in tears. The biggest experiment of
all is abruptly terminated. "One day, every word I said was data,
and carefully recorded for further study and discussion. The next, I
was just a little girl, strange in her way, but of no scientific
interest to anyone," she writes.
Fowler, a writer of fantasy and science fiction who impressed
readers with "The Jane Austen Book Club", turns out a heartbreaking
tale of loss, grief and dysfunctional family, reminiscent of
Jonathan Franzen or Joyce Carol Oates. And without adopting the
preaching tone of other authors' efforts - think J.M. Coetzee's
"Elizabeth Costello" - Fowler writes what is one of the most
touching discussions in recent times of animal rights, animal
intelligence and the questionable ethics of experimental psychology.
It is a book that is about so much more than an exercise in nurture
versus nature.
(Clara Ferreira Marques, Mining and Steel Correspondent)
"THE LIVES OF OTHERS" - NEEL MUKHERJEE
Set in Calcutta in the late 1960s, "The Lives of Others" is the
story of the Ghosh family whose head, Prafullanath, owns paper mills
in the city. Mukherjee describes in extraordinary and vivid detail
the relationships between the various family members who live on
different floors of their house.
Arranged marriages, births, deaths, fierce personal rivalries and
resentment are stitched together with great skill as the family
unravels amid a changing society. The eldest grandson, Supratik,
morally horrified by the lives of the countless starving people in
the country, leaves home to join the CPI(M), Communist Party of
India. His letters about his experiences form one thread of the
book.
Mukherjee brings this world to life with beautifully crafted prose,
describing the weather, trees, jewelry and buildings in intricate
detail. Food is a recurring theme while scenes of brutal torture,
rotting flesh, blood and sickness provide a shocking backdrop to the
story.
(Ed Osmond, Chief Sub Editor)
(The views expressed are the writers' own)
(Editing by Michael Roddy and Mark Trevelyan)
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