Amanda Brookfield's Blog, page 9

Love and Hate

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Is it possible to love and hate a book at the same time? I can think of no other way of describing my reaction to Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory. It is clearly a work of genius. I chose to read it because a few weeks ago The Heart Of The Matter swept me off my feet. Reading that novel, I was on the edge of my seat from the first word to the last - Greene rolled out every one of the big guns - Love, Hate, God, Deceit, Death, Hope - alongside a ripping plot.

The Power and the Glory has the same intensity. Greene's grip on the English language is just as startling. He uses words with knife-like precision, moving you, tearing your heart out. And maybe that was one of the reasons I kept hating it as well as loving it; for after a while such density starts to wear you down, especially if the story being told has no light moments whatsoever - and this one really doesn't. The protagonist is a priest, who has been operating in a fetid south American area where religion is punishable by death. He has been hiding for years, performing his duties patchily and by stealth. This has reduced him to a state of wretched physical and emotional deterioration. He has become little more than a hunted animal. Villagers who once sheltered him and received his unctions are now being killed for collusion. To make matters worse, he is also a drunk. Thanks to that and the existence of a child, fathered out of one brief unsatisfying moment of weakness, the priest has become miserably certain both of his own sinning state and the eternal damnation that awaits him. The entire focus of his life therefore, and of Greene's story, has become the quest simply to escape and save his own skin.

See what I mean about there being no light moments? As the torment and terror mounts,the reader gets pretty damn keen for the priest to escape too. And in the end he comes so close! Through a combination of luck and fortitude, an actual geographical place of safety really does fall within the priest's reach - a place where he will be able to live without fear of death, accepting some modest payment for his services, and putting some regular sustenance into his belly. How the reader longs for this to happen. But such an outcome would be too easy. For what Greene is examining is nothing less than the way to redemption for the most stained and sinning soul.

And that brings me to the heart of the problem (no pun intended): Religion. Or rather Catholicism. Greene is famous for his preoccupation with the subject of course, both as a writer and as a man. But whereas The Heart of the Matter had other themes going on too, The Power and the Glory is solely about the priest's battle with his conscience and his calling. The story moved me, but I am not a Catholic, or anything else particularly. I believe in the innate mystery of life and the power of each person to do good or evil. So even as I felt compassion for the priest's ordeals, there was a voice inside my head muttering, yeah, but eternal damnation is NOT going to happen, so why is he getting himself in such a state? A bit like being trapped in a room with a mad man who won't - who can't - listen to reason. I also felt a growing compassion for Graham Greene himself, ensnared by the faith to which he converted and of which he never felt worthy. If the priest's story offers even a glimpse of the agonies going on in his creator's head, then Greene had a struggle of a life indeed.



View all my reviews

Brilliantly Disconcerting

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There was something very disconcerting about 'My Brilliant Friend', something possibly connected to the fact that I kept thinking about how the author, Elena Ferrante, has famously chosen to keep her identity a secret. (There is even a rumour that 'she' is not a she at all, but a 'he'; but that is mere literary gossip...) With regard to the identity thing, the cynic in me wants to say, Wow, what a great marketing ploy! While the admirer in me prefers to say that such anonymity allows a piece of work to stand or fall entirely on its own merits.

On that basis I would offer therefore, that the disconcerting aspect of the book stems from one never really finding out who the 'brilliant friend' is. The story revolves around two girls, Elena and Lila, growing into adulthood in the violent, poverty-stricken world of post-war Naples where the close-knit rules of social engagement are as entrenched as they are suffocating. The girls feed off each other's insecurities and hopes, veering between times of closest friendship and periods of long silence and alienation. The chapters gallop through the years, taking the two girls from doll-playing through junior and senior school and, for Lila, on to marriage. Both girls are extremely clever and highly competitive, but make very different choices. Getting sucked into their respective stories, it is impossible for one's sympathies not to shift, cleverly twisting the notion of who the 'brilliant friend' might be in the process.

'My Brilliant Friend' is the opener of a highly acclaimed trilogy known as 'The Neapolitan Novels' and I have already bought the next in the series. That said, I almost didn't, and reserve the right to stop before the third. The reasons for my hesitation are twofold:
Firstly, the style of the narrative is dense and relentless, with very little light and shade. Ferrante is obviously aiming for a distinct effect with this approach - life IS dense and relentless! - but I found it hard to stomach, page after page. I kept longing for more light and shade.
Secondly, the canvas of characters filling out the girls' lives was so vast that I kept getting muddled as to who was who. Ferrante, clearly anticipating the problem, had thoughtfully put a list of all the various family members at the beginning of the book for easy reference, like a cast-list at the start of a play. The need to use it however, never quite left me! Which might suggest something uncharitable about my powers of concentration, but which might also indicate an underlying weakness in the story-telling.

In other words 'My Brilliant Friend' is not a perfect book. But then few books are, and it certainly made for a highly intriguing as well as entertaining read. I am keeping an open mind for the next one, but going to take a break first. I have been told it's even better. Watch this space to find out if I agree.



View all my reviews

Odd and ingenious

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Sometimes a book arrives in your life at precisely the moment you need it. In fact I had had Helen Macdonald's 'H is for Hawk' in my sights since the critics started raving about it back in 2014 and for that reason had made sure I was 'given' it for Christmas. Little did I know that it was to be the last Christmas I would ever spend with my mother, who died suddenly on January 29th this year, and that five weeks on, I would find myself turning to the opening page of 'H is for Hawk' as a first attempt at reading fiction since the cudgel-blow of becoming an orphan.

I had of course gathered from the blurb that Macdonald's book had something to do with getting over the death of her father, but I never imagined the depth of the chord this would strike. This wasn't because there were any coincident similarities in what happened to her father and to my mother - there weren't! - but simply because the elements of loss which Macdonald covers, so movingly and eloquently, are universal. I wasn't training a goshawk to cope with my own grief, but every word of every sentence rang true.

But fear not, this is not just a book for people going through bereavement. Far from it. There are myriad other reasons to love it. For a start, Macdonald's account of trying to train her bird, Mabel, is gripping, page-turning. Goshawks are notoriously fierce and un-trainable. As Macdonald takes us through her story she manages to convey her love of Mabel alongside a poignant and respectful recognition of the bird's separateness. Mabel is a wild animal. Being free to be wild is integral to her beauty.

Threaded through the narrative there is also a compelling and chilling analysis of T H White, the famously talented but damaged and dubious author, whose body of work includes a book called 'The Goshawk' in which he details his own clumsy, failed efforts to tame an identical bird. As a lover of hawks, Macdonald has been haunted by T H White's book all her life. Her account of his pitiful efforts at hawk-training, the cruelty that emanates from sheer hubris and ignorance, grow almost too gruelling to read. Every time we got back to Macdonald and her own infinitely wiser, gentler and more successful approaches with Mabel, I heaved a sigh of relief. When White's bird finally escapes I punched the air.

If this all makes 'H is for Hawk' sound a bit odd, then that is because it is. Odd and ingenious. Binding the whole package together, the most magic of ingredients, is Macdonald's extraordinary use of language. According to her jacket blurb, the author is a 'writer, poet, illustrator and historian', and boy does it show. Every description, whether of her own state of mind, or of her goshawk, or of the world around them, shimmers with insight and power. To take just one example, try this:
"The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten."
Or this, of Mabel:
"She yawns, showing her pink mouth like a cat's and its arrowhead tongue with its black tip. Her creamy underparts are draped right down over her feet, so only one lemony toe and one carbon-black talon are exposed.'
I could go on, but I'm afraid I might end up quoting the whole book.



View all my reviews

Creative Sparkle

The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have been a loyal reader of William Boyd since A Good Man in Africa, his wonderful debut novel, published more years ago than I care to remember. On the frequent occasions I am asked to list authors whom I admire, William Boyd's name will invariably feature in my answer. I will often add that what I admire most about him is his chameleon ability to occupy any territory - emotional and physical - with complete authenticity. Whereas most writers find a style and stick with it (glad to have found what works!) Boyd has always struck me as fearlessly willing to launch himself into different writing guises, so that on opening each new novel one has no idea even whether the narrative voice is male or female, let alone what sort of capers he/she might be getting up to, or in what part of the world.

'Blue Afternoon' had somehow slipped through my net. Seeing that it was published in the early nineties, when I had two toddlers to look after, as well novels of my own to write, probably explains why. So, stumbling on a copy in a bookshop in Winchester a couple of months ago, was like finding a present one had failed to unwrap at Christmas! Such an unexpected treat!

And a treat it certainly was, particularly as I had forgotten quite how sparkling and funny early Boyd could be. The main character, Dr Salvador Carriscant, a genius of a pioneering surgeon based in Manila at the turn of the century, is a sheer joy. For all his professional skills, he has a chaotic private life that spirals out of control when he falls hopelessly in love with a married woman. But there was real darkness and suspense in the plot too, all of it rooted in vividly depicted accounts of the terrible butchery a surgeon could get away with a hundred years ago.

As ever, plot spoilers are not my bag, but for me this was a page-turner, with the added blaze of a powerful love story. So much so, that I found myself thinking later Boyd has got a bit dry and polished - lost a little something perhaps from the energy and inspiration of his creative youth.




View all my reviews

Honesty and Genius

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


To be honest, I have spent twenty years avoiding Graham Greene. He is one of those 'big' literary names, talked about by devotees with such passion, that they trigger in me a certain reluctance to get involved. Also, prior to that twenty years of avoidance, I had had several runs at the opening page of 'Brighton Rock' only to find myself closing the book and wondering what the fuss was about.

Then someone who knows me very well (a big plus when it comes to reading recommendations, I find) suggested I have a go at 'The Heart of the Matter' and...................and well, words fail me, because it was a novel so stunningly good that I almost feel unequal to the task of explaining why.

For a start, there's the story: Overlapping triangles of people trying to love each other in the impossibly gruelling physical circumstances of West Africa during the Second World War. Not just Scobie, the main character, but all the minor ones, are portrayed with such compassion and depth that the reader feels for each of them in their various predicaments. No one is 'right' and no one is 'wrong'. They are just humans in difficult circumstances, doing their best to communicate and understand each other, and often getting it wrong. I can think of no other writer who tackles Love, in all its guises, so head-on, so fearlessly, not to mention every other emotion on the human spectrum: jealousy, guilt, shame, hatred, fear, remorse, to name but a few. It had me scrambling for biographical detail about Greene himself. I mean, how could one man get to know so much, let alone be able to articulate it with such warm yet razor-sharp insight? The answer turned out to be simple: Greene's life was messy, as all lives are. He sought a meaning, as many of us do, through religion and art.

But don't let the 'religion' tag put you off (as it had me). His writing may, famously, be about the struggle to be Catholic - (in this book Scobie is a man torn in two by his conscience and the conflicting pull of his all-too-human heart) - but the picture Greene is really painting is much broader than that. It is a picture that transcends the question of religious faith, becoming instead a thrilling, heart-breaking narrative quest to illuminate what it is to be human; what keeps us going, what redeems us from failure, what remains after we are gone.

The power of Greene's language is also astonishing. Sentence after sentence hits you between the eyeballs. A cummerbund lies on a hotel bed,'ruffled like an angry snake'; a police station has the 'odour of human meanness and injustice - the smell of a zoo, of sawdust, excrement and ammonia, and lack of liberty'. As a reader I have to confess to a terrible habit of turning down the tip of any page that contains some thought or image that I find particularly striking. By the time I reached the end of 'The Heart of the Matter' I had turned down so many page-tips that it is now impossible to close the book properly! But that's fine. It is a book I am happy never to close properly. It is a book I want never to forget. A book to read again. And again. A book that will always remind me of the power of words when they emanate from honesty and genius.



View all my reviews

Too Much Horror

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


There were times when I nearly threw this book across the room. Not because it wasn't good - but because it was simply too unbearable to read. Every scene in the Japanese prisoner of war camp, with the daily slave labour on the railway, and the cruelty of illness, deprivation and punishment, was like sitting in front of a horror film. I wanted to press the 'off' button, to prevent the images of what Richard Flanagan is describing from forming in my mind.

The reason I didn't was out of a sense of duty to bear witness, just as Richard Flanagan - as he has publicly and poignantly explained - is using the novel to bear witness to what his father endured as a prisoner of the Japanese during the Second World War. Not to have seen it through to the end would have felt like a cowardly cop-out.

I was also gripped by the love-story at the heart of the book, between Amy and the doctor, Dorrigo Evans. Relayed in past narratives between the war camp episodes, the account of their meeting and passion was like balm, sustaining Dorrigo as he strove in the near-hopeless conditions to survive and keep safe the men under his charge. This sporadic history of their relationship was like balm to me too. For where there is love there is hope. I cannot remember when I was last so desperate for two characters who love each other to be rewarded with reunion. (And no, I am not going to spoil the story by telling you whether that happens).

For all its Booker-winning credentials however, the final third of the book seemed to falter. The narrative at this point goes in several directions, embracing not only the post war travails of Dorrigo and Amy,but also the fates of a couple of the Japanese camp guards. The intention behind this is indisputably admirable - it would have been far easier and infinitely more pat to leave the'enemy' as just that. Instead Flanagan endeavours to offer us credible insights into the paths that had shaped Dorrigo's tormentors and the ends that await them. The overall effect for me I'm afraid, was to detract from the central momentum of the narrative, stealing a little thunder from what would otherwise have been the most thunderous end.



View all my reviews

Falling Back In Love With Books

The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life by Andy Miller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Andy Miller is the most engaging of writers. 'How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life' made me giggle to the point of annoying those around me (always satisfying). Its starting point is that having once been a book-nut, fatherhood and the general travails of the daily grind (earning money, lack of sleep, lack of time etc) had gradually whittled away his love of reading, in the process compounding his already dangerous habit of talking (knowledgeably) about books he hadn't read...

The honesty of what Andy Miller describes about himself and his quest shines through. He never pretends for a moment that what he set out to do - namely, to read fifty great books, including and especially ones that he had pretended to have already read - was plain-sailing. On the contrary. Several of the 'great' works he tackles, such as George Eliot's 'Middlemarch', prove extremely difficult to get into. Some he almost gives up on. But he persists, sometimes arriving at moments of blinding epiphany - suddenly 'getting' why the book is great - and sometimes arriving at a point where he can describe, most lucidly, why the end result does not work for him. And it was this that I liked particularly: the reaffirmation, almost lost in our busy entertainment-and-knowledge-on-a-plate world, that reading can and often should take EFFORT in order to release its treasures.

His chapter on Michel Houellebecq's 'Atomised' was especially brilliant. Never - NEVER - have I loathed a book more than I did 'Atomised'. But Andy Miller loves and 'gets' it. The chapter takes the form of a fan letter he writes to Michel Houellebecq, a letter both so amusing and so acute in outlining the book's virtues that I got to the end thinking that I might almost return for a second look myself. Almost...(But at least I HAVE read it).




View all my reviews

Magic Touch

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In this novel Rachel Joyce offers another perspective on the story she told in 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry', taking up the narrative from the point of view of Queenie Hennessy, the woman to whom Harold sets out to post a letter, only to find himself walking the length of England to see her instead. I enjoyed the Harold Fry book so much that it was out of something like loyalty that I embarked on this companion piece. At the back of my mind there hovered the expectation of disappointment.

I could not have been more wrong. In fact, I enjoyed this immersion in the sad but rich life of Queenie Hennessy even more. It is impossible to talk about the plot without spoilers. So I will simply say that as a writer Rachel Joyce has a magic touch. She shirks none of the big issues - Love, Loss, Sickness, Violence, Death - and yet writes about them in the simplest most moving language. She is also very wise, not in a clever-clogs factual way, but in the manner of one who has a real and deep insight into the joys and sufferings of being human.

I didn't want the book to end. And when it did I found myself scanning the biog details hoping that Rachel Joyce has been luckier than her character Queenie Hennessy. It sounds like she has and I could not be more glad.



View all my reviews

Uncomfortable Reading

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It is impossible to read 'The Miniaturist' without out at times feeling trapped inside a dolls house - part enchanted, part stifled part panicky. Jessie Burton creates this effect by bringing to life every detail of the repressed, vindictive, hypocritical and greedy world of seventeenth century Amsterdam, when the exotic possibilities of the outside world were clashing with draconian religious and social practises of the old European order. Our hearts go out to Nella, the innocent eighteen year old bride of a wealthy merchant, who places her in his austere grand home like a doll in a dolls house and then leaves her to sink or swim on her own. To ram home the metaphor (at times a tad too heavily, I felt), the merchant gives Nella a dolls house as her 'wedding gift' which she gradually fills with the help of a mysterious 'miniaturist' (aka:someone who makes small objects and figures) who seems to know more about Nella's strange new life than Nella herself.

For a while, the exploits of the miniaturist are so uncanny that I thought the novel was going to turn into a sort of historical whodunnit. I couldn't help wondering if Jessica Burton had thought so too during the course of writing her story. But after teetering on the edge of such possibilities the novel asserts a more conventional plot denouement, compellingly and movingly told to the last word. Nella and those closest to her endure the most terrible losses and suffering, but glimmers of hope emerge, in the form of a baby (always a cheery promise for the future!) and the blossoming of Nella herself into a true and formidable woman, more than capable of surviving and taking on the world.



View all my reviews

A Book I Didn't Want To End

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love it when I am enjoying a book so much that I don't want it to end.

This was how I felt reading this second novel by the original and remarkably talented Evie Wyld. Her writing grabs you by the throat and heart and doesn't let go. With 'All The Birds, Singing', she allows you to think you know what is happening and why it has happened, but then gradually lets you realise that you don't have a clue. Quite apart from the poetic, gritty quality of her prose, this alone is enough to keep you turning the pages as you would a thriller.

The story is set between past events in Australia and current events in England. There are sheep-shearers and catastrophe and loneliness, not to mention quests for redemption and love, but all of it managed through suspenseful story-telling and a wonderful deftness of touch. Every character is flawed, damaged, vulnerable, making them all the more painfully believable. As in life, no one is completely evil or completely good. The time-lines interweave ingeniously, one narrative taking you back towards the starting point of the drama, while the other pushes forwards to the resolution of current events The sheer structure of that alone is a delight, and seamlessly executed.

Don't be put off by the sheep-shearing. Everything Wyld writes about animals is as compelling as what she has to say about humans. In fact, two of the stand-out 'characters' for me were dogs, one terrifying - soured and vicious - the other so loving and loyal that you feared for its safety as much as that of its owner. To say more would interfere with the pleasure in store for anyone intrigued enough to check out this fantastic book for themselves.





View all my reviews