Umbrella

Apr 19, 2013 William rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, uk, 21-ce

Some thoughts on my first reading.

Last winter I happened to read Oliver Sack’s Awakenings (see my review), which is the urtext for Will Self’s new novel Umbrella. Even where references to Dr. Sacks’s book do not appear in Umbrella — such as the World War I and present-day sections — the Sacks's book serves to inform the understory, to use a botanical metaphor. Awakenings (1973) is a book of case studies by neurologist Oliver Sacks. In the mid-60s he famously gave L-DOPA, a relatively new drug m...more

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May 21, 2013 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read2012, booker-winners-and-listed

I slogged through this in order to say I had read all of the Booker shortlist before the award was announced, for once. Let's make one thing clear - without that compelling reason, I would not have kept with it.

There is a difference between difficult writing and good writing. I personally think Will Self careens toward difficult without giving a thought to the reader. Oh, I'm not just complaining because this is hard to read. I get many of the references and imitations, I just didn't think they...more I slogged through this in order to say I had read all of the Booker shortlist before the award was announced, for once. Let's make one thing clear - without that compelling reason, I would not have kept with it.

There is a difference between difficult writing and good writing. I personally think Will Self careens toward difficult without giving a thought to the reader. Oh, I'm not just complaining because this is hard to read. I get many of the references and imitations, I just didn't think they were necessary to do all at once. As Self himself said on page 86, "simply wishing the madness away won't make anyone regain their sanity."

First of all, you have the obvious comparison to Ulysses by James Joyce. In fact, just in case you dared to miss the comparison, he starts with a quotation from Ulysses - "A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella." This quotation comes back to haunt the reader towards the end of the story, but I won't ruin that particularly moment for the two other readers who will make it that far.

Ulysses has something very important that Umbrella does not - variety. It morphs between storytelling styles and points of view, with a rise and fall that keeps the reader interested. Umbrella goes FULL SPEED AHEAD with no chapters, no paragraphs (maybe a few indented starts), no dialogue signs, no breaks. Characters have dialogue and internal thoughts in the same breath, and italicized words aren't one or the other but are frequent throughout the book. There are three time periods covered by the novel but you never know where you are. Is an event being remembered or narrated? Are we moving linearly or going back and forth? Who are all these people? Ha.

Also, if this is Ulysses, this is if Ulysses took place in a mental institution in a Cockney accent. Oh yes. Before I forget, a good portion of the spoken words in this novel are Cockney slang. Good luck.

Suddenly, I got to page 138. And a character said "We're'erebecausewe're'ere." All in one word, no spaces, and repeatedly, and I thought, "Where have I heard that before?" I thought it was either Lem or Huxley, and guessed right by rereading my review of Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, where one of my favorite bits was people chanting or singing "We're HERE because we're HERE because we're HERE because we're HERE!" Woah. Okay. So a reference to Lem, interesting. So it must be okay that I don't know where I am and nothing makes sense.

I do think it would have been nicer to hide in a bathtub than to force myself to finish.

I took to a deep skim of the rest. If you try to pick out the important bits, you uncover a story that isn't that different from Awakenings, where a psychiatrist treats a patient with Postencephalitic parkinsonism. Audrey Death, the patient, appears throughout the novel in her youth, in her mental hospital self, and everything in between. As far as I can tell the characters DO things but don't feel anything. It is impossible to connect with anyone when you're being bombarded with the songs they have in their head.

I sound impatient. I feel impatient. I read some lovely books this year that were nominated for the Booker. I'm worried the judges will select this one because they don't understand it, because it intimidates them, and therefore it must be good. I hold that this technique itself is not a bad idea, but would be far more interesting in smaller doses.(less)

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Sep 10, 2012 Jack7609 rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

Please save yourself from ending up with Audrey in the asylum and don't even bother with this book. WHAT?????

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Sep 04, 2012 Amanda rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: man-booker-longlist-2012, 2012, booker-books, britain, fiction, history

My first review was a bit harsh, so here's the new version edited after I had time to distance myself.

I am not the best reader, but Umbrella was really hard to read. Run on sentences and giant page long paragraphs. I spent 5 hours on the first 100 pages and a mere 3 on the remaining 300. Conceptually I was looking forward to the novel and I really tried to invest time to follow the story. I like stories that span generations, world war 1, mental illness, and regret. Parts I understood were good...more

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Jun 08, 2013 Kerry rated it 1 of 5 stars

It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2012; however, reading Will Self’s ninth novel, Umbrella, one does undoubtedly question how anyone ever ended up completing it, let alone nominating it for an award.

Written as an endless stream of consciousness predominately centred on psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner and one of his mental patients, Audrey Death, readers will find themselves questioning who is the maddest: Busner, Death, Self or themselves for reading this novel. There are no...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Krit rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found this to be a difficult but rewarding reading experience. Hats off to Will Self for pushing himself and the modern novel to a bold new frontier; a highly literary and chaotic free form, sprinkled with the hundreds of dormant gem words of the English language.
With no paragraphs, let alone chapters, it was difficult to plunge in and bow out of my reading sessions. It takes a while to pick up the thread of the nutty ramblings and honestly, I didn't know what was going on about a third of t...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Ben Dutton rated it 4 of 5 stars

Will Self has always been one of those writers whose work I hear about. His novels all sound tricksy, clever and comic – three qualities I adore in fiction, and yet, somehow, I’ve managed to avoid reading his fiction all these years. This is not to say I’ve not read his other work – his occasional pieces in British newspapers have been interesting, insightful, if occasionally sending his readers to their dictionaries. This later quality is often seen as a negative to the Self-bashers – why does...more Will Self has always been one of those writers whose work I hear about. His novels all sound tricksy, clever and comic – three qualities I adore in fiction, and yet, somehow, I’ve managed to avoid reading his fiction all these years. This is not to say I’ve not read his other work – his occasional pieces in British newspapers have been interesting, insightful, if occasionally sending his readers to their dictionaries. This later quality is often seen as a negative to the Self-bashers – why does he see fit to exclude the majority of his readers by using words not in common usage? It’s a crap question, and only an idiot would ask it. That said, he is not going to win many over with his new novel, Umbrella, which will not only have them rooting out their dictionaries, but also their medical encyclopaedias. This, as I see it, is a good thing.

Self has been very open about Umbrella. He wanted to write a modernist novel for the twenty-first century, to prove that the modernist tradition wasn’t moribund and could still prove insightful. He has succeeded totally in his intended aims. Umbrella is a literary tour-de-force, undoubtedly Self’s best novel (I can make that claim without having read the others, because the sheer depth and range of this novel is vast) and is utterly brilliant.

It is an apparently difficult novel in construction. It is stream-of-consciousness told without chapter breaks, almost no paragraph breaks, no speech marks and run-on sentence; it has scenes that switch characters, time and location, sometimes within a paragraph and over 400 pages of it. You hear this, you think it will be tough to read. It really isn’t. I found Umbrella flew past, that I followed its shifts with relative ease, and that it all built to such a wonderful conclusion.

The story concerns Audrey Death, whose Encephalitis lethargica forms the spine of the novel. We see her life in World War 1, and we see her Doctor, in the 1970s, attempting to wake her with experimental treatment. We also see this doctor, Busner, in 2010, returning to the hospital where Audrey once lived and he once worked. Along the way we meet Audrey’s brother, Albert, who has an eidetic memory and who has turned his back on his sister. The novel unravels these various histories – personal and case – and builds a commentary upon memory, life, health and friendship.

At first I thought it surprising that Self had a novel on the Man Booker Prize long list in 2012. After reading Umbrella, I think he might just win it.

Will Umbrella Win?

I think it might. It has the scope that Booker judges love. It has a story that engages intellectually and emotionally, and is absolutely superb. Where it might fail is that its construction is deliberately complex, and this might put people off. If it wins, I suspect it will become one of those winners that people talk about but rarely read (or at least finish). It’s not populist, but it should be rewarded. British fiction can be quite tame – it is good to see some experimentation is left in the old beast.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Antonomasia marked it as sampled

Shelves: 2012, modern-british-fiction, booker-shortlisted-or-won, kindle, twenty-first-century

My on-off swooning over Will Self's journalism and radio and TV appearances began nearly two decades ago, and I tingled with anticipation the first time, some time in the early 2000's, when I got my hands on a real whole fiction work of his. But it was as if the brain-fizzing, knicker-dampening, sonorous-voiced arrogant wanker had sent his rather less sexy, sparky and interesting twin brother along on the date instead, Sweet Valley High style. Just enough in the vocabulary and subject matter was...more My on-off swooning over Will Self's journalism and radio and TV appearances began nearly two decades ago, and I tingled with anticipation the first time, some time in the early 2000's, when I got my hands on a real whole fiction work of his. But it was as if the brain-fizzing, knicker-dampening, sonorous-voiced arrogant wanker had sent his rather less sexy, sparky and interesting twin brother along on the date instead, Sweet Valley High style. Just enough in the vocabulary and subject matter was similar for a common upbringing to be apparent, but it was just not the same and I left early, comprehensively disillusioned.

And it's been the same every damn time I've read his fiction, hoping that it might somehow turn out different on this occasion. At least with Kindle samples, there's no need to commit to many hours of a whole book if disappointment seems likely to ensue. So when Mr WS's article on modernism set me a-flutter all over again, here was the means to instant, gratis, gratification of that same old sceptical curiosity.

Oh dear. Already on the first page are Joycean slightly scatological stream of consciousness snippets which leave me with the same ennui as Will has just said he feels towards most conventional English prose fiction. Deja-vu ensues as Zack Busner again encounters more of his psychiatric-ward patients again. Whilst Self's ego in the Guardian piece rails against the cosy routines of mainstream eng lit, I suspect his subconscious of trying its best to force out a nice little mental-health based series of the James Herriot / Gervase Phinn school. Also, oh how I would love to see him write something which had nothing to do with London; I understand the immersive allure of the city, really I do, but there are a lot of other places out here. And the old childhood scenes, whilst not bad, seem so very much like My Mother Said I Never Should . So once more, nothing in that depressing category "modern British literary fiction" feels new to read; for a few minutes yet again I thought Will Self might have the antidote, but it was just more of his seductive snake oil. I don't know how to create the real stuff myself, so I may as well bugger off and continue to read non-fiction and foreign stories.

But wait. Whilst there aren't the fireworks of his non-fiction prose here, it's not entirely valueless. Anyone who's familiar with doctors as family members or friends (or colleagues) will recognise the way they contradict one another's professional approaches. He makes me look up three words I'd forgotten: it's not the shock of the new ... a teensy splash in a puddle, perhaps, but it helps. And sometimes the narrative flows in tune with real stream of consciousness (not as forced and stylised as Joyce), projecting images and feelings more than extracting laboured thoughts; this is pleasing.

It's sort-of tempting to read the whole book in the next few days and write one of the first proper online reviews (this specious privilege would cost £11). But tonight, it's heavy stuff. I don't think I can read it at a time when I'm worried in case someone I care about ends up in a place like this. And elderly hospitalised Audrey makes me think too much of the last months of my late grandmother. There are times for stirring up ghosts, having a chat with them and a spot of gentle part-exorcism over the tea leaves. But right now I have a bad headache and a house full of material clutter to continue clearing, so this isn't it. (less)

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May 16, 2013 Anne Charnock rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fractured-narratives

Umbrella proved to be a challenge but not consistently so. Don’t be put off if you haven’t read this novel as yet. I occasionally lost the thread – not knowing which character was speaking, not realizing that the setting had changed half a page previously, and that the story had jumped back or forward in time. These shifts, I soon realized, were happening mid-sentence.

I decided to go with the flow, not worry if I briefly lost a handle on the story. Nevertheless, for the most part I knew what was...more Umbrella proved to be a challenge but not consistently so. Don’t be put off if you haven’t read this novel as yet. I occasionally lost the thread – not knowing which character was speaking, not realizing that the setting had changed half a page previously, and that the story had jumped back or forward in time. These shifts, I soon realized, were happening mid-sentence.

I decided to go with the flow, not worry if I briefly lost a handle on the story. Nevertheless, for the most part I knew what was going on and I suspect if I read Umbrella again everything would fall into place.

There are two main characters namely Zach Busner a psychiatrist in London, and Audrey Death who is one of Busner’s 'enkies' – his post-encephalitic patients. The novel also follows the lives of Audrey’s two brothers, Albert and Stanley. Albert (De’Ath) a mathematical savant is in charge of shell production at the Arsenal during the First World War. Stan is fighting in the trenches. Audrey herself works with toxic materials in the danger sheds at the Arsenal before the onset of her illness. She’s estranged from her family due to her affair with a married man, a toff, who fails to support her during her later decades of confinement in an asylum.

Will Self presents Audrey to us with great tenderness. It’s heart-breaking stuff. But he combines tragedy and comedy with great skill, as per usual.

The fractured, modernist writing style is seductive; I fell into it. And the style is perfect for Self’s subject matter – the chaos of war, mental derangement. In fact, as I thrashed through several difficult sections I almost sensed the confusion Audrey Death might be enduring.

I have to admit that I’m glad I knew the bare bones of the story before I began the book!

Reading Umbrella as an eBook turned out to be a bonus. The characters in this novel are rarely introduced in a tidy fashion so I searched for the first occurrence of several names to check if I’d encountered them before. And many of the psychiatric terms were covered by the eReader’s dictionary.

But maybe Will Self would look askance at such a desire for word-by-word clarification. Certainly, the eReader saved me from the full-on angst I might have experienced with a print copy but maybe this author, with this book, would prefer to keep his readers in a state of high anxiety.(less)

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Sep 11, 2012 Jakey Gee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hard going, but worth the effort. My appreciation of it is probably still more about the fact of there being a modernist in the Booker longlist than about the book itself, but this one feels like a laster.

What can I say: it’s rich, immersive and verbally engaging. There’s some fabulous language in there: ‘His hand ivy on the doorjamb, his carpet slippers mossy on the mat’. Head wounds like strawberry jam. Carpet worn like punctuation. Liver and onions in the retired Jewish psychiatrist’s flat....more

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Aug 09, 2012 Aaron (Typographical Era) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, man-booker-2012, nook, will-self

Before reading this novel whenever I thought of umbrellas my brain immediately conjured up images related to the three R’s: rain, Rihanna, and Raccoon City. After reading it I can’t shake the graphic images of the appalling conditions patients were forced to endure in the asylums that supposedly existed for the sole purpose of caring for them. I’m also left with a massive headache and the unenviable task of making the novel adhere to a rigid rating structure in order to compare it side by side w...more

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Oct 14, 2012 Ali rated it 3 of 5 stars

A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella. James Joyce, Ulysses
Surely the phrase “it’s worth the struggle” when applied to a book one is about to read is a phrase to strike fear into the heart of any reader. Yet that is one phrase that seemed to come out of several reviews that I read about this Booker shortlisted novel. Irritatingly it might actually be true. I have to say that a modernist, stream of consciousness is not my idea of a literary good time. It is in fact the kind of writing I...more A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella. James Joyce, Ulysses
Surely the phrase “it’s worth the struggle” when applied to a book one is about to read is a phrase to strike fear into the heart of any reader. Yet that is one phrase that seemed to come out of several reviews that I read about this Booker shortlisted novel. Irritatingly it might actually be true. I have to say that a modernist, stream of consciousness is not my idea of a literary good time. It is in fact the kind of writing I generally avoid. There were times when reading this novel – that I lost my way a bit – there were moments when I found myself thinking “what the ..” however I didn’t hate it – I actually rather liked it. It is a challenge – and I do think that the novel will carry on dividing opinion – and it may also, I’m afraid, disengage many readers who feel life is just too short.
“Umbrellas are never contracted for, only mysteriously acquired, to be fleetingly useful, then annoying and cumbersome before eventually being lost.”
The story – don’t worry there is a story, and a good one – concerns Dr Zack Busner and his work in the 1970’s with a group of patients at the Friern hospital in London. The patients are those suffering from encephalitis lethargica – contracted around the time of the First World War. One patient in particular interests Busner – Audrey Death. The story of Dr Busner’s work with his trusty side kick psychiatric nurse Mboya is woven into the story of Audrey’s life and that of her two brothers during the First World War. Audrey, a working class girl born in 1890, becomes a feminist and a munitions worker, at the London Arsenal where her bother Albert launches his career, ending up in charge of the place itself. When Audrey contracts the sleeping sickness that swept the world at this time, her brother Stanley is missing, while Albert is coming up in the world. Busner’s relationship with Mboya and his patients is what really engaged me. The world of the huge Victorian asylums that by the 1970s were coming to an end is a horrifying one, the image of catatonic human beings left for decades to merely exist with little if any intervention is one to make anyone shudder. In 2010 an ageing Busner, returns to where the Friern hospital was, to contemplate his work.
“Nostalgia, he thinks, more and more of it will be needed to tranquillise the collective psychosis of a steadily ageing population. And he would have reached for an appropriate Biro were he not having such a bad day.”
The non-linear structure of this novel makes it hard work at times. There are very long sentences – paragraphs which go for pages – no chapters, and the different story strands weave in and out of one another. There are times when decades pass in the middle of a sentence, so the reader really needs to keep their wits about them, and so it is certainly not a quick read.
As regards the Booker Prize, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it win, it wouldn’t be my choice as winner – but it is clever and the prose is really very good. However I don’t think a book that so many people will be put off reading – or that will start and give up on – should win. For me the prize should be about celebrating books that are beautifully written, certainly, but also that people want to read and engage with, I’m not sure Umbrella is that book.
(less)

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Sep 29, 2012 Vivienne rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-man-booker, literary, mental-illness, period-fiction

Here is another case of my finding myself at odds with critical reviews, many of which fall over themselves in praising Self's modernism. Frankly I found it rather boring and possibly a case of 'The Emperor's new Clothes'.

I am not shy about reading novels which are challenging. But this proved very hard work from start to finish. If I wasn't reading it as part of a Man Booker Shadowing Group I would have abandoned it.

My housemate suggested I just let the words wash over me. After a while of doi...more

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Jan 25, 2013 Tony rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

30. UMBRELLA. (2012). Will Self. *
Whoa! Got the feeling that I was back in school taking a seminar course on James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” This novel is written entirely in a stream of consciousness format that managed to conquer me in only fifty pages. It may well be a very good novel – it was short-listed for the 2012 Man-Booker Prize – but it is not a novel that I cared to agonize over. After all, I do read for pleasure. Take note of the various blurbs on the dust jacket that proclaim thi...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Andrew Dehany rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dictionaryswallowing (v. intrans.) is one of the pleasures of reading Will Self. In my peregrenation through his latest novel, I encountered a number of words I’m unlikely to ever look up: kyphotic, marmoreal, akinesia, abulia, campanile, vermiculated quoins, sphygmomamometer, seborhhoeic (something to do with oil presumably), gazeekas, billikens, oculogyric crisis, gastrocnemius, désordeonné, cachexia, resipiscence, palilalic verbigeration, opistothenos, apharesis, convolvulus, hepephrenics, me...more Dictionaryswallowing (v. intrans.) is one of the pleasures of reading Will Self. In my peregrenation through his latest novel, I encountered a number of words I’m unlikely to ever look up: kyphotic, marmoreal, akinesia, abulia, campanile, vermiculated quoins, sphygmomamometer, seborhhoeic (something to do with oil presumably), gazeekas, billikens, oculogyric crisis, gastrocnemius, désordeonné, cachexia, resipiscence, palilalic verbigeration, opistothenos, apharesis, convolvulus, hepephrenics, melmic, selvidge, phalanstery, dystonia, agrypnia.

At times he uses these words, however unforcedly, however precisely, as a short efficient shorthand to apprehension rather than trying to let us get inside an experience, quite bypassing Chekhov’s maxim “Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass”. Will Self’s detractors might tell us that he’d say the lunar globulus’s alkmenic rays incandensced the crepuscular shard of vitrified silicus.

However, in his 2012 Booker Prize shortlisted ‘Modernist novel’ Umbrella we are, more than in his previous works, thrust inside the narration, which shifts breathlessly, sometimes mid-sentence via leaps of association, between three time periods: 1918, following Audrey Death working in munitions at Woolwich Arsenal while her husband Stanley fights in the trenches; 1971, Dr Zack Busner trying out a new treatment L-DOPA on his post-encephalitics in the Friern Mental Hospital; and 2010, Dr Busner revisiting the events of 40 years ago while doddering round a North London rich in contemporary detail - fried chicken, phonecards, Magnums.

There is in fact one word that impresses itself upon us more than his more recondite coinages: the word is Umbrella. It is used variously as a term for a syringe, a penis, a symbolic artefact whether inside out or lost or misplaced. We note it’s the first thing Robinson Crusoe makes for himself. Stanley used to work for an umbrella-makers. Above all, as Busner notes, it is emblematic of a shift that occurs in an era of mass production:

“When...he pauses, musing...did the umbrella first become an article to be routinely forgotten rather than assiduously remembered? Surely, to begin with they would’ve been expensive items, invested with strong affect and not to be casually abandoned...as nowadays, given their cheapness and ubiquity ---” (p.157, author’s ellipses)

Our second encounter with it after the title of the book is in its epigram from Joyce: “A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.” This is something Stephen Dedaulus says during his iterminable literary discussions of Shakespeare in the Scylla & Charybdis chapter of Ulysses. It prefigures Umbrella’s interfusion of time periods by alluding back to a fiction in an earlier novel in a scene which discusses the biographical and historical origins and resonances occurring in earlier fictions (specifically Shakespeare’s).

As with a recent carbuncular “reader’s edition” of Ulysses which employs different typefaces and strategies to unravel the different skeins of allusion and attribution, Umbrella tends employs italics to signal a direct lift from a previous work, a song lyric or quotation; these are usually slightly mangled or paraphrased, but are often quite recognisable. The italicised irruptions often function more as glosses, or commentary, rather than an integral part of the action. They are highly contextual, and, this being new Modernism, postmodernistic anachronism isn’t noticeable (examples of such things elsewhere would be found in the invocation of Sherlock Holmes (“It’s elementary”) in the movie of The Name of the Rose, or even, if you like, the ticking clock in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra). The only anachronisms, in the sense of a thought from an earlier period occurring in a later one, abound in all literature, not just Modernist writing. To digress, there is an interesting wave of steampunk writing where you might find yourself reading about a present or future time but one as imagined a long time ago (for example, Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) in which the space-ships are straight out of HG Wells, and there are none of the digital watches beloved of Douglas Adams, never mind the Apple innovations he championed. Perhaps I mention steampunk because we find ourselves at another crisis of Modernity (capital M) such as existed nearly a century ago for the Modernists - the centre cannot, now, as then, hold. Our (anti?)intellectual climate is blighted by Creationism, which is a steampunk view of modernity through the lens of the dark ages (if lenses had even invented yet, there’s a Double Fail in waiting).

In Umbrella’s opening pages, the Kinks song ‘Apeman’ insists upon Busner’s mind, and when we come to the Great War era sections later, the music hall staple ‘Dear Old Blighty’ repeats just as insistently; this is a particularly interesting example because it gets turned into ‘Dear Old Bilyati’ and now the gun “goes off in my face” as culture is overcome by the horrors of the world it can’t fail to describe even when at its most escapist. All of the characters in Umbrella coexist in three different time periods, each anticipating “the binary blizzard that would blow through humanity’s consciousness” (p.395). Which blizzard this time?

The figure of Audrey Death, who has succumbed to the mysterious sleeping sickness that keeps her under for four decades until Busner’s experimental L-DOPA treatment brings her into the 1970s, is narrated, as has been noted elsewhere, using a method that didn’t exist when she went under; Modernism was an invention of the 1920s, a reaction to the Great War; and perhaps the strange wave of encephalitis was some kind of geistic superpersonal reaction to the same trauma; in the context of Umbrella, it is. Paradigms of diagnosis and misdiagnosis are charted through the book’s broad historical sweep (qv p.85-86).

Even her name undergoes similar traumas to the phrases and snippets echoing through the novel, as she is known variously as De’Ath and, on her medical record, Audrey Dearth. Signifier and signified interfeed; she is dead but not dead, Death as Dearth of existence but not dead. Busner is increasingly convinced that “the essence of the disease is paradox” (p.195); he refers primarily to pathology, but in the context of the novel it is both an enlightening and disheartening notion; that we are ourselves out of time, but at once imprisoned within it, in an echoing chamber. We are, still, and always, truly and tragically Modern.(less)

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Feb 22, 2013 Candy Wood added it · review of another edition

This book with no chapters or even sections divided by white space, multiple focalizers experiencing varying time settings, and unfamiliar medical and dialect vocabulary turned out to be unexpectedly readable and compelling. Of course I’m interested in London during and after the Great War, in the 1970s, and now, the main time settings of the book, and in seeing the changes through the eyes of intriguing characters: the psychiatrist Zack Busner, his patient Audrey Death and her brothers (Albert,...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Greg rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: booker-shortlist, library-loans

Almost every time I picked up this book to read it, I fell asleep. Now that may be a coincidence, but it's certainly not an endorsement.

Umbrella tells the story of Audrey Death, a munitions worker during the Great War, who contracts a brain disease and is confined to a lunatic asylum in a state of catatonia. The other key character is Dr Zack Busner, the psychotherapist who is treating her decades later.

The book is written as one continuous stream; there are no chapters and few paragraph breaks....more

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Sep 09, 2012 Sophia rated it 5 of 5 stars

There are three main narrative strands in Umbrella. The first follows Zack Busner, a psychiatrist working in the 1970s at the huge Friern Mental Hospital near the Alexandra Palace in London. He becomes fascinated by the brain disease encephalitis lethargica, and by one particular elderly patient who suffers from the condition. Audrey Death was admitted to Friern when she was struck down by this disease in 1918. She is semi-catatonic, able to walk but plagued by tics which overwhelm any natural m...more There are three main narrative strands in Umbrella. The first follows Zack Busner, a psychiatrist working in the 1970s at the huge Friern Mental Hospital near the Alexandra Palace in London. He becomes fascinated by the brain disease encephalitis lethargica, and by one particular elderly patient who suffers from the condition. Audrey Death was admitted to Friern when she was struck down by this disease in 1918. She is semi-catatonic, able to walk but plagued by tics which overwhelm any natural movement, and incapable of normal speech. Busner is convinced that somewhere trapped inside her body, Audrey's conciousness, and that of other sufferers of encephalitis lethargica, remains intact.

The second strand follows Audrey from her childhood through to the onset of her disease. This was my favourite part of the story and Will Self's descriptions of life in Victorian London were wonderful. We also spend time with Audrey's brothers; Stan, a sensitive young man whom we follow to the trenches in France and Albert, a highly intelligent but cold and calculating over-acheiver. The third strand of the story is set in the present day with Busner now an old man, living alone and haunted by his memories of Friern, which has now closed down and been converted into luxury flats.

It all sounds quite simple and clear cut when I write it down in like this, but of course it isn't - Will Self doesn't really do simple. He dispenses with chapters and even paragraphs and the whole thing just runs on and on in a Joycian stream-of-consciousness. He switches between the different time periods and viewpoints without warning, splicing them together - often in a single sentence - in a way that reminded me of a DJ mixing tracks. Of course this gives the reader the very practical problem of having no natural breaks where you can go and make a cup of tea or indeed make any room in your life for anything but Umbrella. Will Self demands your complete attention for as long as it takes and I felt totally engulfed by this novel, finally emerging after two days in a kind of stupor. Not that I'm complaining, but if you'd like to read this too then you need to be prepared to set aside some serious time.

Self writes about the sad, the angry, the sordid and the nasty, laying bare the innermost self of each character with no flatteries or allowances made. His use of metaphor is just astonishing, he revels in obscure words and phrases, but his mind whirrs at such speed that I could read this book a hundred times and never quite catch it all. Possibly the most important "character" in Umbrella is the hospital itself, cold and brooding, a nightmare place that reeks of despair and pain. There's little of the humour you'll find in other Self novels, but that's quite appropriate with such dark subject matter.

Umbrella made me feel as though I was just hanging on by my fingernails as the Will Self express roared along. His vocabulary is, of course, amazing, and my dictionary didn't leave my side as I scrabbled along trying to understand every little thing and failing miserably. Self is so unashamedly literary he makes me feel dull and stupid in comparison, which is unsettling but not necessarily a bad thing once in a while. In fact, it's quite refreshing to find an author who just doesn't care about making a novel that will be accessible or have mass appeal. He writes what he wants to write and if you can't keep up, tough!

There are people who will hate Umbrella - members of the anti Will Self brigade who find him pretentious and verbose. I can understand this viewpoint but I can't agree. I genuinely think his mind works on another level to that of most people, and I had a metal picture of him writing this in his garret, fingers flying across the keyboard as they tried to keep up with his brain. If you are prepared to put some effort in, Umbrella is hugely rewarding, and I definitely think it fulfils the criteria this year's Booker judges set of revealing more on subsequent readings. Is it a masterpiece? Well, I don't feel in the least bit qualified to judge something like that, but I really think it might be. (less)

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Jun 18, 2013 Paul Gelsthorpe rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an incredibly challenging but worthwhile read, primarily due to Self's ultra-modernist approach of doing away with chapters and form completely and focusing on a stream of conscious stylistic device.

Anyone who is looking for the black humour of 'How the dead live' or 'The Butt' may be disappointed. There are a few chuckles along the way but for the most part this is a serious work of art.

We are taken on a pan 20th Century journey, linked together expertly through the main character, a...more This is an incredibly challenging but worthwhile read, primarily due to Self's ultra-modernist approach of doing away with chapters and form completely and focusing on a stream of conscious stylistic device.

Anyone who is looking for the black humour of 'How the dead live' or 'The Butt' may be disappointed. There are a few chuckles along the way but for the most part this is a serious work of art.

We are taken on a pan 20th Century journey, linked together expertly through the main character, a psychologist called Busner's attempts to understand a bizarre and debilitating mental illness. We are given glimpses of the past, revealed slowly through the re-telling of the story of his favourite patient.

The idea that a mental illness could be caused by the mechanisation of the modern age (Audrey's tics and jerks are linked to her work in a first world war munitions factory) is a lofty but not altogether unfeasible premise.

The horror of the first world war is dealt with in an incisive and unforgiving manner which really does bring home the abject squalor and suffering experienced by those involved.

Self's obsession with the psycho-geography of place is examined here in the corridors and safe rooms of the asylum, and in the changing facade of London throughout the modern era. He is an expert at exploring how space and surroundings can be imbued with psychological characteristics a theme he nailed in 'Walking to Hollywood'.

I was really taken by the way the symbol of the umbrella is continually referred to as a figment of modernity (it's made exclusively of modern materials, plastic, rubber, metals, and put together in factories). This idea reminded me of themes touched on in a recent lecture I attended called 'DH Lawrence and the modern world' where some of Lawrence's work was discussed with a particular focus on his thoughts about the onset of the industrial age and the uncertainties that came with the transition from a pastoral society to one of mass production.

This is a rewarding read, with some flourishes of real intellectual gumption that you are unlikely to get from many contemporary writers. Yes, it's experimental and at times disorientating, but who wants to spend their life reading Dan Brown?(less)

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Feb 03, 2013 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 21st-century, fiction

This book is a bit challenging to read, particularly early on when it's not yet clear who all the characters are and in what different time periods the book is set. Early on, it takes a while to understand that we've gone from 1970 to World War I because we've gotten inside another character's head, and then that the blinking digital numbers that suddenly appear are on a digital watch as we come back to 1970. The narration jumps from character to character and across several decades within parag...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Glucose Johnny rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: keep-calm-and-carry-on, european-war

The act of reading this book was intense and exhausting. It takes some time to grow accustomed to Mr. Self's unrelenting stream of consciousness. Unlike Faulkner or Whitehead, the only literary gasps occur in seemingly random indentations scattered sparsely throughout the text. The story unfold, page after relentless page, blossoming into something beautiful and engrossing. My only complaint is that Faulkner does it better. Perhaps the comparison is unfair: this book is wildly original and the w...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Shaina rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-read

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy from the Goodreads First Reads Program.

I initially had a bit of a rough go with the stream of consciousness style of writing. I prefer books that have more paragraph and chapter breaks. After I familiarized myself with Self's style, I was able to be less distracted and focus on the content of the book. Addressing conditions in asylums is a bold move and I have great respect for Self's willingness to do so.

This isn't a book that you can just breeze through. A l...more

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Oct 13, 2012 D.M. rated it 2 of 5 stars

If there's one thing I have to say about Umbrella, it's that I'm glad it's over. It wasn't a bad book; I don't think Self could write a book I'd think was flat-out bad. It did, however, feel like a bit of a marathon at times. There are no chapter breaks, and precious few paragraph breaks, and it's written in a way that suggests all near-400 pages of it are meant to be read in one sitting. The way the narrative trips blithely back and forth between characters, locations and time periods isn't as...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Ian rated it 4 of 5 stars

I want to like Will Self’s fiction, I really do, so much of his other work is fascinating, as is the man himself. Whenever I’ve picked up one of his books, however, I’ve always struggled to enjoy them. I was intrigued by Umbrella because of the warm press it received.

I found the beginning very annoying. Like someone being clever with words for the hell of it. Self, you bastard, you’ve done it to me again, I thought. I know the strange format has irritated some readers. Later on, around page 250,...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Russio rated it 5 of 5 stars

I took one look at this and shuddered. A single 397 page slab of text with no chapter markings and, often, no warning that the character or even time period was going to shift, all told in first person stream of consciousness. Plus, it was written by Will Self, a fairly self-important type who has the dubious dishonour of having written TWO books that I abandoned reading (Dorian and The Book of Dave if you want to know).

But this was so much better than I had anticipated and I found myself rivete...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Superb - a novel that gives one faith in contemporary English fiction. There are minor faults - the representation of accent in places, the tone and accuracy of his reproduction of early twentieth century/late nineteenth century english - but the strengths are numerous and determining. It is, contrary to reviews, not a modernist novel although late Woolf comes often to mind. Self writes as if the discoveries of modernism are an established, historical set of facts that one cannot hide from - a c...more

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Jun 09, 2013 Jane Ostler rated it 3 of 5 stars

Umbrella by Will Self
A tale of two families, the D'eaths and the Buzners and the characters at Frien Barnet Hospital who live and work there. Much of the book is told as if we are living in a suspended state of moral regurgitation away from the censor. The title comes from a poignant quotation about forgetting by James Joyce . Time, memory and forgetting are themes of the book. Time and forgetting are the themes which carry the book along.

Written in the first person, it lurches between the mind...more Umbrella by Will Self
A tale of two families, the D'eaths and the Buzners and the characters at Frien Barnet Hospital who live and work there. Much of the book is told as if we are living in a suspended state of moral regurgitation away from the censor. The title comes from a poignant quotation about forgetting by James Joyce . Time, memory and forgetting are themes of the book. Time and forgetting are the themes which carry the book along.

Written in the first person, it lurches between the mind scapes of Audrey D'eath and Zac Buzner. Beginning with her early childhood, moving into her youth and then the time she worked in a munitions factory and took a lover. Not much makes sense, but is fleshed out with detailed factual information clearly in the second half of the book. It is as though Will Self takes the reader along on his journey but denies them the usual goal posts of paragraph structure, or chapters to hold on to. It is as though you are Alice taken by the hand by the Red Queen and made to run as hard as you can over brook, field, forest and even down the rabbit hole non stop. It creates the quandary for the reader when putting the book down, that they have to remember a word or phrase in order to find their place again. So you see the author is directly provoking the memory of the reader, asking it to work harder.

Zack Buzner is a likeable character, patient, kind and considerate towards his patients; anything but to his own family. Self uses the same technique on him, we witness his youthly zeal and passion, the deviations of his mind, how he navigates his car across London. We follow the young psychiatrist's valiant attempts to resuscitate the brains of his patients using L-Dopa. The author is concerned with pain inflicted on people by their family, and the wider human family dealing with itself. Social structures unseen but felt in daily life. The forgotten, and ignored inmates of this mental hospital are given lives and personal histories on a par with those on the other side of the institutional gate. Superior, dismissive, judgmental, harsh. The time span of the book runs from pre First World War to the 1990's. We witness women as chattels, women as lovers, women as factory workers, women as pillars of Edwardian society and mothers. We see men as bumptious overly self confident fathers, dismissive judgmental brothers, men who love each other under arduous circumstances, men with savant powers, men with compassion and humour.

So here we are, living inside the minds of the characters - random, messy, unpleasant for the most part, but like being in an avata for the reader. The whole book considers madness or a long view on it. A panoramic sweep over time and geography. We see London and the First World War battlefields at close quarters and from afar. The entire premise of the First World War created a 'world turned upside down' for our forebears. That the human spirit came through it was a considerable achievement, and Will Self shows us some of the human casualties. The after effect of reading the book is one of recalling miasmic confusion in chunks of disparate prose. Could he be evoking how it felt to be Audrey Death?

Read it if you like unravelling puzzles and exploring unfamiliar territories. Read it if you are interested in tracing human societal patterns. Read it if you have a broad mind.

Jane Ostler-Barnett
9.6.13(less)

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Dec 22, 2012 Katelyn rated it 1 of 5 stars

I was disappointed that I disliked this book. I'm almost always open to reading any novel about mental health issues, which is why I was intrigued by this one. But the writing style ultimately impeded me from really getting into the book. The lack of chapters and paragraphs was daunting in a way. Furthermore, the constant stream of italic thoughts, and the switching back and forth between past and present without hesitation was a little exhausting. I hope to pick this book up again at some point...more

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Oct 03, 2012 MJ Nicholls marked it as sampled

I had one of those dreams where you wake up to discover Will Self has written a near 400pp piece of tiresome, thick-as-porridge modernist prose where every page feels like reading ten pages, and the soporific swamps of merged internal monologue, stylised third-person narration and dialogue leave one so bloated and unsatisfied and weighed-down, and the CONTENT screams at you so loudly and insufferably one’s only sane response is to place the book on the table and sigh with one’s lardy belly, wond...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Jack Higgins rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked the plot and the idea of encephalitis lethargica being a pathologisation of a mechanised age, but the writing style can really be tiring...

1 like · like · see review

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The Transatlantic...: Umbrella	5	4	Mar 25, 2013 03:23pm
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BookerMarks: First BookerMarks review of Umbrella	11	24	Sep 10, 2012 03:08pm

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