More What I’m reading

Are You Somebody? by Nuala O’Faolain

Why did I bother reading this book? It was probably the Angela’s Ashes style cover. That, and the praise from the likes of Edna O’Brien and Roddy Doyle. Anyway, what emerges from this autobiography is a not particularly pleasant person without a great deal to say. The book’s neither the work of literature it seemingly imagines itself to be, nor the gossipy This Is Your Life celebrity-fest towards which it sometimes veers. O’Faolain has certainly known quite a few people who would be interesting in other hands. Indeed, many names are dropped — which no doubt, but rather disappointingly, explains the cover’s glowing blurbs.

Sky Burial by Xinran

Supposedly non-fiction, this books recounts the life story of a Chinese doctor who ends up spending many years searching for her husband in Tibet. As the title suggests, the search isn’t a totally successful one, and there’s a great deal of hardship, but the overall tone is strangely upbeat. Tibet is so far away, and so rooted in the past and in myth that in many places this book is reminiscent of the sort of intelligent, feminist fantasy a writer like Le Guin might produce

Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

It’s taken me a while to get through this short story collection. Not because Link’s hard work to read — far from it — but I did feel that a similarity of misty who-am-I? viewpoint and the not-quite-of-this-world feel of much of her writing made it more enjoyable if you came back to it after a break. Link’s tone is playful, tangential, and light as a feather, yet the effect she achieves is strong. I must say that few writers in recent years have made me want to write short fiction again myself — but Link has. Next time, though, I’d like to see her tackling a wider range.

Albion by Peter Ackroyd

After London, which some you may realise was a key resource for me in writing The Light Ages, Ackroyd turns to look at all things English. I have to say I found the book to be a disappointment. It’s crammed full — in fact, too full — of anecdote and information, but lacks the overall sense of purpose which London possessed. Ackroyd — or, I rather suspect, his researchers — selects a variety of aspects which supposedly define our national character. Bawdiness, woods and forests, the urban maze — you name it, and it’s probably there. But a great many of these choices, for all the detail which they are dressed up in, seem arbitrary. Still, it isn’t a book I’d be without, not least because it suggested in its chapter about King Arthur what I hope will be the final title for my new novel: In Another Place.

Undiscovered Country by Christina Koning

What would rather read — a book that’s slick, quick, easy to read and forgettable, or one that’s over-ambitious and confused, but evocative and memorable? I know what the answer is for me, and Undiscovered Country falls firmly into the second category. Set in 50s Venezuela, the book has the same colonial sheen as some other books I’ve read recently. There are the same gin-swilling yummy-mummies, the poolside parties, the bewildered and bewildering natives. But then the book lurches from character to character, place to place, and style to style without ever really setting upon a single convincing narrative. Nevertheless, the overall feel and pattern of the book do finally lend it a convincing emotional coherence. Not a complete success, but well worth looking out for if you care about good modern novels.

Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard

On re-acquainting myself with this book, I’m more struck than ever by Ballard’s brilliance — and in particular, his intensely visual approach. The vivid juxtaposition of strange events, which war seems to bring about more than any other human endeavour including all the arts, is superbly achieved. I’ve always been aware of his liking for the surreal, but I hadn’t seen before just how much Ballard is the written equivalent of Dali and Ernst.
Funnily enough, it also made me realise how key an influence Ballard is as to the book I’m currently finishing. It’s common to think — Aha! That’s just what I need — when you’re reading someone else’s novel as you write your own. The effect can often be negative, which is why many writers avoid fiction, but I’ve always been prepared to trust and hope that some subconscious or spiritual guiding hand is there, and in this case it does seem to be true. Ballard was already there in my book: I just hadn’t realised. Whether anyone else will see him there is another matter — if it matters at all…

Gweilo by Martin Booth

Another slice of far-eastern colonial childhood, this time in 50s Hong Kong. In many ways, this autobiography, written in a sharply clear-eyed style which is perhaps partly due to the author being aware that he didn’t have long to live, is what Empire of the Sun might have been if World War Two hadn’t intervened. There are the same distracted parents, the same boozy adults, the same sense of teeming life and a culture which a western child can understand far better than their elders. But the overall effect is deliciously carefree and sunny. A memorable book.

Empire by Niall Ferguson

I never intend to read according to themes, but I guess that at some level I’m looking for certain kinds of books at a particular time. Anyway, Empire is a book which attempts to reassess the British Empire in this post-colonial world. Although Ferguson doesn’t shirk the horrors, exploitations and injustices, he uses the example of other empires, and in particular the brief empires of Nazi Germany and Hirohito’s Japanese, to argue that, overall, things weren’t so very bad. All very interesting, and there are some nice details thrown in (I’ll never listen to Amazing Grace, which was apparently written by a slave-trader, in the same way again), but overall the book tries to cover too much ground, and ends up losing much sense of continuity of theme or argument. I gather from a note at the end that it was based on a TV series. That explains it.