"Reading "Small Holdings" by Nicola Barker."
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The absence of the question mark from this book title is a question Lynne Truss and I have been debating for weeks on end. In the book itself the title is a question – i.e. what is the meaning of life? – so one can only assume that Eggers left the question mark off to give the title a symmetry of sorts, or to introduce a shade of the postmodern to what is a direct, linear narrative.
Who knows. It’s not a question on the lips of most folks who read this compelling and exhausting account of Valentino Achek Deng, whose life story is the most torturous, unbelievable, and fortuitous you are likely to encounter. Eggers narrates this incredible true tale in Sudanese Deng’s English-speaking voice, from his struggles with conflict, poverty, desolation, desperation (and more or less any human suffering it is possible to tolerate) to his equally unhappy life as a refugee in post 9/11 America.
This book makes misery memoirs look like squealing little crybabies. The only thing Deng didn’t have to tolerate, in fact, was tyrannous parents. Deng as a person is not portrayed as heroic, endlessly courageous or extraordinary – he is achingly human throughout, making his struggle the more poignant. The book is most likely too much to endure for most people – its relentless gloom putters on for 535 pages, but his story is a punishing reminder of quite how terrible we in the West have let things become in Third World nations.
Cheer yo’self up this Xmas. ]]>
MJ Nicholls
read and liked
Len's
review of What Is the What:
"If you know me at all, you know I read a lot. So I don't take these reviews lightly. Here goes: What is the What is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!
The story of Valentino Achak Deng, a so-called Lost Boy of the Suda...more "
"If you know me at all, you know I read a lot. So I don't take these reviews lightly. Here goes: What is the What is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!
The story of Valentino Achak Deng, a so-called Lost Boy of the Suda...more "
MJ Nicholls
read and liked
Nick's
review of What Is the What:
"i’ve read little to nothing about the genesis of WHAT IS THE WHAT, no reviews and no interviews. i do know that this has been recommended as Eggers’ best book, that the people who’ve read it are in love with it. i can also intuit, from his amaz...more "
"i’ve read little to nothing about the genesis of WHAT IS THE WHAT, no reviews and no interviews. i do know that this has been recommended as Eggers’ best book, that the people who’ve read it are in love with it. i can also intuit, from his amaz...more "
"
Returning to the same plane of consciousness, to the smiling sadness of your life, is never de" ...more
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Returning to the same plane of consciousness, to the smiling sadness of your life, is never de" ...more
Martin Amis, you will discover, is a human punching bag for critics. Google his name or one of his books, and you will find an endless resource of Amis-bashing from broadsheets to boobrags.
The reason? Pretension. People perceive Amis as a conceited windbag who ranks himself amongst Nabokov, Saul Bellow and his father Kingsley in the pantheon of literary greats. The voice doesn’t help – that interminable transatlantic drawl with its considered hesitations and self-important emphases.
The fact of the matter, of the fact of the matter (of the matter), is that Amis is a towering presence in the field of lit-crit: the sharpest and smartest Nero of criticism working in Britain right now, with almost four decades of experience under his belt.
Which brings me to Experience, a book that is not about lit-crit, that is not about literature, but which purports to be about Amis and his dad. Well, firstly, there is no book about Martin Amis which is not about lit-crit and the process of writing. After the first fifty pages – past the infinitesimal detail about his entrance into the litosphere – I got the impression Amis had been imprisoned in this role of literary executioner since birth. His entrance into the literary world is so casual, like a son automatically following in his dad's footsteps, that it is barely covered.
The novel is largely about Amis’s relationship with his father Kingsley Amis and his cousin Lucy Partington, cut down by Fred West at a bus stop at the age of 21. Amis writes about his father using an incredible amount of literary comparisons and footnotes, showing how much he learned of his father through his books, and quite how important ‘the book’ was in their lives – scarcely a day in the Amis household would pass without reference to the Greats.
As is to be expected in household of writers who count Philip Larkin as a cuddly uncle. Anyway, this book is fascinating and intimate. Amis was deeply affected by his cousin’s death, and her presence is felt throughout the whole novel, mirroring her impact on his life. Kingsley is evoked as a genius, wit, and a hilariously un-PC father, but also an adulterer, paranoid and lonely man.
Amis looks back on his youth with humour and contempt – including a series of spotty photos in the sleeve – and tackles the press who fondly hound him, and romanticises his dental agony as being a sign of greatness. There are the usual Amis preoccupations to be found here – Nabokov, Saul Bellow and his never-less-than-irritating mate Christopher Hitchens.
Even if you’re not a fiftysomething intellectual from a time when people had staunch political stances and voiced ‘radical’ opinions among the bourgeois highbrow crowd, you should find this memoir a touching portrait of an unconventional and privileged upbringing. The passages about his father's death are especially touching. Amis's most honest and lyrical writing is to be found here.
Or, you’ll find this a self-indulgent portrait of a man you have absolutely interest in whatsoever.
I rather enjoyed it, you know. ]]>
Last night I finished reading Nicola Barker’s monolithic novel Behindlings: an über-manic triumph for the imagination wired on a diet of speedball and Dr. Pepper. Barker is one of the most venerated novelists of her generation, winning the Impac Award at the turn of the millennium, and has been raking in the prizes and wonga ever since.
Behindlings is a throbbing headache of a novel. Her language kept me smiling and giggling for the first 200 pages – when her talent knew no fault, when her loopy plots wrapped me in fuzzy love – but then… I hit a wall of total alienation. Barker had literally been spoon-feeding me so much brilliance, I burst. Each page became a sugary confection I was unable to swallow, lest my gut distend far and yonder.
Newcomers should try "Three-Button Trick" or "Wide Open". ]]>