Munich - post-read review
I really wanted to like this. I REALLY wanted to. My favourite Robert Harris novels are epic treats which I reread every now and again and I wanted another of them. I didn't get it.
Munich is very historically accurate and carefully researched. You feel that every building and every character is based on reality. And perhaps that's the problem. It puts historical accuracy above storytelling.
The immediate problem with doing this is just getting everything into your readers' dopey heads. I struggled to remember the layout of the two cities under discussion (London and Munich) or the purpose of the various historic buildings that were lovingly depicted. I also couldn't grasp or remember the roles the dozens of government officials (both British and German) in each scene. No doubt all those people WERE there at the time, in reality. But for entertainment purposes? Eliminate, conflate, simplify - give us two or three people per scene, with their roles and personalities clearly explained, and remind us each time we enter a building, what it's for.
Of course, film is much better at providing shorthand and simplifying complex scenes and Munich may well make a better film than it does a book. (Sacrilege, I know.) But the other problem, beyond the heavy weight of historical detail, is the lack of plot. It really just describes what happened at the Munich Conference. Hitler and Chamberlain meet, or exchange frosty messages. The media react to those messages and everyone wonders if they're about to go to war. Rinse and repeat. There's a hint of a thriller plot about intercepted papers and assassination plots, but it never really goes anywhere, which is the oddest thing of all because it suggests that Harris wasn't properly in control of his material, which I struggle to believe.
The flaws I see in Munich are very similar to those I found in his last book, Conclave, and the one before that which I forgot about altogether in my previous blog, An Officer And A Spy. All three are based closely on fact - perhaps showing a former journalist's love of research. All three lack the spark of invention and creativity that I want to see - again, perhaps this is the respect of a journalist for the truth, but Harris is writing fiction, or meant to be.
For proper creativity, I would have to go all the way back to The Ghost, which at the time of publication I by no means felt was his strongest work - but which did at least have some properly fictional characters, a reasonably tense thriller element and some external settings, viz its lovely, bleak out-of-season seaside. What is it about Harris and use of external landscapes? Other than The Ghost, the wonderful volcanic landscape of Pompeii and the snowy woods of Archangel, he barely allows his characters to go outside.
Oh and the women thing. We were introduced to the hero's wife Pamela in the first chapter of Munich, in which she is duly revealed to be beautiful, a cut above our hero and unfaithful. She pops in and out of the remainder of the narrative, being rebuffed every time she tries to connect with her workaholic husband, and the marriage fizzles out with the rest of the plot in the final chapter. There are no other female characters other than a throwaway motivation for the German character Hartmann, and the Downing Street secretaries and their German equivalents, all of whom are invariably described only through male eyes and purely in terms of whether they are or could be of sexual interest.
It almost feels as though Robert Harris has been taking too many lessons from John Le Carre, who will win no prizes for his portrayal of femininity.
Le Carre may have been of his time but Harris has no real excuse for his persistent indifference to female characters. Only Enigma's Hester and Pompeii's Corelia have any personality or life to them. Even Ian Fleming, not exactly famed for his gender balance, wrote better, more rounded, more intelligent portraits of women.
This was not meant to be a hatchet job. I still admire Harris's work and will unquestionably give his next a chance. But I feel ominously that he's moving in a direction I can't and don't want to follow, so perhaps for me, Enigma and Pompeii are as good as it gets. Which is still pretty good.
Munich is very historically accurate and carefully researched. You feel that every building and every character is based on reality. And perhaps that's the problem. It puts historical accuracy above storytelling.
The immediate problem with doing this is just getting everything into your readers' dopey heads. I struggled to remember the layout of the two cities under discussion (London and Munich) or the purpose of the various historic buildings that were lovingly depicted. I also couldn't grasp or remember the roles the dozens of government officials (both British and German) in each scene. No doubt all those people WERE there at the time, in reality. But for entertainment purposes? Eliminate, conflate, simplify - give us two or three people per scene, with their roles and personalities clearly explained, and remind us each time we enter a building, what it's for.
Of course, film is much better at providing shorthand and simplifying complex scenes and Munich may well make a better film than it does a book. (Sacrilege, I know.) But the other problem, beyond the heavy weight of historical detail, is the lack of plot. It really just describes what happened at the Munich Conference. Hitler and Chamberlain meet, or exchange frosty messages. The media react to those messages and everyone wonders if they're about to go to war. Rinse and repeat. There's a hint of a thriller plot about intercepted papers and assassination plots, but it never really goes anywhere, which is the oddest thing of all because it suggests that Harris wasn't properly in control of his material, which I struggle to believe.
The flaws I see in Munich are very similar to those I found in his last book, Conclave, and the one before that which I forgot about altogether in my previous blog, An Officer And A Spy. All three are based closely on fact - perhaps showing a former journalist's love of research. All three lack the spark of invention and creativity that I want to see - again, perhaps this is the respect of a journalist for the truth, but Harris is writing fiction, or meant to be.
For proper creativity, I would have to go all the way back to The Ghost, which at the time of publication I by no means felt was his strongest work - but which did at least have some properly fictional characters, a reasonably tense thriller element and some external settings, viz its lovely, bleak out-of-season seaside. What is it about Harris and use of external landscapes? Other than The Ghost, the wonderful volcanic landscape of Pompeii and the snowy woods of Archangel, he barely allows his characters to go outside.
Oh and the women thing. We were introduced to the hero's wife Pamela in the first chapter of Munich, in which she is duly revealed to be beautiful, a cut above our hero and unfaithful. She pops in and out of the remainder of the narrative, being rebuffed every time she tries to connect with her workaholic husband, and the marriage fizzles out with the rest of the plot in the final chapter. There are no other female characters other than a throwaway motivation for the German character Hartmann, and the Downing Street secretaries and their German equivalents, all of whom are invariably described only through male eyes and purely in terms of whether they are or could be of sexual interest.
It almost feels as though Robert Harris has been taking too many lessons from John Le Carre, who will win no prizes for his portrayal of femininity.
Le Carre may have been of his time but Harris has no real excuse for his persistent indifference to female characters. Only Enigma's Hester and Pompeii's Corelia have any personality or life to them. Even Ian Fleming, not exactly famed for his gender balance, wrote better, more rounded, more intelligent portraits of women.
This was not meant to be a hatchet job. I still admire Harris's work and will unquestionably give his next a chance. But I feel ominously that he's moving in a direction I can't and don't want to follow, so perhaps for me, Enigma and Pompeii are as good as it gets. Which is still pretty good.
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