"Gravel Heart" by Abdulrazak Gurnah

A young boy, Salim the narrator, grows up in Zanzibar with his mother and her brother; his father lives on his own down the road. Then uncle goes to England, gets married and begins to work for the Embassy; Salim goes to live with him to make the most of his opportunities in England. Salim's life is a serious of casual happenings, almost a picaresque, and it is not until his mother dies in Zanzibar that he begins to understand the shameful secrets at the heart of the family.

It begins and ends in Zanzibar; the middle section is in  England. The first line is "My father did not want me." and the central mystery revolves around why the narrator's father left the family home to live by himself. But, perhaps, the psychological narrative explores how the narrator learned to accept the frailties and actions of his parents; this is perhaps the biggest lesson of growing up. So the events that take place in England, where the maturing narrator fails to achieve his potential, and experiences love and heartbreak, despite their seeming randomness, are key to his development.

There is a political narrative as well, which is to do with colonialism. Following the imperialistic British 'protectorate' of the island there was a revolution which led to a socialist government. These events interact strongly with the narrator's family, leading to his grandfather's exile; the subsequent corruption of the revolutionary government also has a huge influence on the family.

It is beautifully written in elegant and elegiac prose. The settings are crystal clear: "These were streets built for the shuffle and slap of human feet." (Ch 1). The characters are vividly real. It has a first person narrator and it is written in the past tense.

Selected quotes:

• "My father did not want me. I came to that knowledge when I was quite young, even before I understood what I was being deprived of and  along time before I could guess the reason for it." (Ch 1; first lines)
• "Fathers, just like everyone else, have to deal with the relentless manner in which life conducts its business." (Ch 1)
• "European colonial officials ... lived in huge old Arab houses by the sea, and marked their ceremonial imperial rituals with white linen uniforms adorned with fantasy medals." (Ch 1)
• "I was fourteen years old then and a person can feel old and wise at that age even when he really had no idea, and what he took for wisdom was only a precocious intuition arrived at without humility." (Ch 2)
• "'That is not a smile, that's a grin,' Uncle Amir said. 'Next time I take a photograph of you, I want you to compose yourself so that your personality comes through, not your teeth'." (Ch 3)
• "What is the point of literature? I think that the person who asks that question will not find my answer convincing anyway." (Ch 4)
• "I did not tell him that my mother was the one who sent me here and that something broke in my father;s life a long time ago and I was the debris of their disordered lives." (Ch 4)
• "I was required to read books that opened up the world for me and made me see how much roomier it was than I had imagined." (Ch 5)
• "In repose after pleasure her face was slack-jawed with satiety." (Ch 5)
• "It seemed that human sorrow was always based on regret and pain in the past." (Ch 5)
• "She carried herself as if she was a beauty and her self-love made her provocative." (Ch 7)
• "It was pointless pedantry, like poetry, a delight in complexity, a relish for detail, a stubborn refusal to forget what was known." (Ch 9)
• "It was a conceit of the time that the existence of anything, a river, a lake, a mountain or a beast, could not be assured unless a European person had seen it and wherever possible named it." (Ch 9)
• "At a certain age you don't understand how long life is." (Ch 10)
• "Some people have a use in the world, even if it is only to swell a crowd and say yeah, and some people don't." (Ch 11; last line) There seems to be a reference to The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by T S Eliot where the narrator, looking back at the pointlessness of his life, says "I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two,"

January 2020; 261 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Also by Abdulrazak Gonfur, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2021, and reviewed in this blog:

• The Last Gift
• Afterlives

Books by Nobel Laureates reviewed in this blog:

Abdulrazak Gurnah (2021)

Afterlives
The Last Gift
Gravel Heart 

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

Klara and the Sun

The Buried Giant

When We Were Orphans

Patrick Modiano (2014)

In the Cafe of Lost Youth

The Black Notebook

Alice Munro (2013)

The View from Castle Rock

Herta Muller (2009)

The Passport

Doris Lessing (2007)

The Golden Notebook
The Fifth Child
The Good Terrorist
Ben, In the World 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1992)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Saul Bellow (1976)

The Victim

Heinrich Boll (1972)

The Train was on Time

Samuel Beckett (1969)

The Expelled; The Calmative;, The End & First Love

Waiting for Godot

John Steinbeck (1962)

Of Mice and Men

Cannery Row

Albert Camus (1957)

The Plague

The Outsider

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Fall

William Faulkner (1949)

Sanctuary

As I Lay Dying

Andre Gide (1947)

The Immoralist

Strait is the Gate

The Vatican Cellars

Hermann Hesse (1946)

Steppenwolf

Demian

Thomas Mann (1929)

Death in Venice

"A Twin Room" by Jon Neal

This short novel grabbed me immediately. The narrator (it is written in first person using the past tense) is clearly on his own ... but he keeps talking about 'we'. He is preparing for a few nights away from home. He talks to someone else. But there is no-one there. This is a fantastic hook. I'd guessed what was going on by the end of the first chapter but by then I was firmly into the book.

The major characters are solid and perfectly sculpted and the setting of a seaside town which has seen different, if not necessarily better, days (which, in a neat use of pathetic fallacy, a little like the ageing narrator himself) is beautifully described. 

The pacing of the book is sound, with major turning points at the 25%, 50% and 75% marks. The action never flags.

I wondered whether the Hero's Journey had been a model for the plot. The action starts in the protagonist-narrator's 'ordinary world' which he is about to leave because of the 'inciting incident' of the loss of his partner. He then moves to the Seaside town where he meets Viktor, an enigmatic character who functions as a sort of 'sage or guide':he is encountered five times, twice enigmatically: as a waiter - or is he? - as a laundryman, as a carer, as a figure in a parade - or was it him? - and as the person whose words form the epilogue to the novel. He experiences trials - the estate agent, the boarding house kitchen, etc - which lead to a final life-or-death ordeal. The only major element of the trope that is missing is the return to the ordinary world at the end, but psychologically the hero has already achieved the holy grail of coming to terms with the problem that propelled him into the adventure. 

The  omnipresent Viktor is an enigmatic motif, a fleshed-out version of a spirit guide, perhaps?

I loved this this debut novel. It was a miniature jewel, showing considerable talent. I look forward to the author's next.

Selected quotes:

• "It had been one hundred and eighty-five days. A lifetime. And yet fleeting." (Ch 1; the first words) The second and third sentences seem to encompass so much about the general theme of the book
• "I eyeballed the bulging suitcase as if in some perverse Mexican stand-off with it. If it could speak, I wondered what it would have said to me." (Ch 1)
• "Its frozen tidiness made it look like a stage set of a play." (Ch 1)
• "I noticed that some walls retained the painted ghost signs of industries resigned to history: tailors, bakers, greengrocers." (Ch 2)
• "I thought of the promises I’d made. To never stop thinking of you. To never stop talking about you. And us." (Ch 2)
• "The hotels on the seafront embodied the changing fortunes of holiday resorts." (Ch 3)
• "Was I the author of this story? Or was it being written by somebody else?" (Ch 3)
• "Here I was, meant to be looking at one of life’s most expensive purchases, instead staring at the hair of a stranger stuck to a bar of soap." (Ch 7)
• "Life was ... to be grabbed fiercely with both hands like a rugby ball and hurtled down the pitch." (Ch 9)
• "The present? With each step down I tried to nail it. But all I could muster was somewhere blurry between past and future." (Ch 12)
• "‘But perhaps,’ he said, ‘every dream has to be paid for.’" (Ch 12)

This debut novel, a miniature jewel, shows considerable talent. I look forward to the author's next.

Update: The next book is a classic murder mystery called The Other Path.

Update #2: I was fortunate enough to be able to invite the author, Jon Neal, to talk the the Grove Theatre Book Club in Eastbourne on 21st February 2023. The feedback from the members was good - in particular, it was thought to be very good on bereavement - and Jon was very informative about his writing process. To my question about whether there was an intention to follow the Hero's Journey plotting schema, he replied that he had been thinking along folklorish lines. 

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"A Shetland Winter Mystery" by Marsali Taylor

 Another murder mystery involving sailor Cass Taylor and her policeman boyfriend Gavin. Cass is on shore  for once, preparing for Christmas with Gavin, Cat and Kitten, when mysterious footprints appear outside their remote cottage: 'Trows' (Shetland fairies) are traditionally active at this time of year. But is this a prank, and how is it linked to the controversial wind turbines being built? 

Then a young boy disappears, possibly one of the prankers ...

What makes this series of whodunnits exceptional is that Marsali Taylor is more and more able to take time with her stories. Much of it is about Shetland's preparations for Christmas and the momentary difficulties experienced by Cass and Gavin as they navigate the early waters of living together, and on land. This is allied to a careful exploration of the relevant characters who are so well-developed that I felt apprehensive about their possible fates. The depth and texture of the story is further enhanced by the (fully explained) use of Shetland vocabulary (eg "She was in a right ammerswak. The goddess poise was gone. She was wearing the pinnie she’d worn yesterday, but the buttons were done up squint."; Ch 8)  and by some superb pieces of description of the Shetland countryside:

• "There had been an intense frost during the night. The orange-brown kelp on the shore was crinkled white with ice, and there was a glaze of ice in the curve by the point where the burn ran down." (Ch 7)
• "It came on a serious shower of snow as we hit the main road. The windscreen wipers quickened to double speed, flack, flack, and still there was snow running down the window, as if we’d caught a foaming wave going over us. The tyres hissed through pools of water on the salted road, but the ditches at each side were white with snow lying on frozen water."  (Ch 18)

I want to go there (maybe not in winter).

In short, it is a good little murder mystery in the classic style, but books of this quality transcend the genre.

Selected quotes:

• "I woke to the rattle of the kitchen Rayburn being riddled, followed by the clank of an ashbucket and the crackling of flames in kindling." (Ch 2)
• "She was a tortoiseshell, with a coat the colours of several different spice jars shaken together over a worktop." (Ch 2)
• "It wasn’t much after two, I reckoned, yet already the air was beginning to thicken at the sides of buildings, and the sky was darkening." (Ch 5)
• "His voice softened to the gentle note of a drummie bee drowsing round flowers in summer." (Ch 6)
• "The downward-angled streetlights lit the frost hanging in the air like spotlights in a theatre" (Ch 12)
• "Motive: love, lucre, loathing." (Ch 18)
• "I have a cousin in Canada who’s so like me that we could use each other to shave by." (Ch 26)

This is a crime fiction series that gets better and better. The books, in order, are:

• Death on a Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders
• A Handful of Ash
• The Body in the Bracken
• Ghosts of the Vikings
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders

January 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Where do camels belong?" by Ken Thompson

 This brilliant book by an ecologist is a polemic against the division of species in 'native' and 'alien'. He shows that the idea of 'naturalness' is wrong-minded by asking where camels belong: in the middle east or in North America (where they evolved and then went extinct) or in South America (where llamas and alpacas etc represent the greatest species diversity from the camel root) or in Australia (the only country where camels are feral).  He suggests that the myth of nativeness assumes something special about this moment in time, the writer of a key text, “Elton believed firmly that species belong to wherever they happen to be right now, irrespective of length of tenure or of where they had evolved or migrated from. More than that, he believed that belonging confers rights of occupancy, that these rights extend indefinitely into the future, and that natives are morally superior to aliens.” (Ch 2)

He goes on to suggest that the talk of 'invasive' aliens is based on a very few cases where an introduction (normally by humans) caused damage to an ecosystem and that normally the arrival of aliens increases biodiversity, or would do except that “Invasion biologists worry a lot about biodiversity, but only native biodiversity; introduced species are not allowed to contribute to biodiversity. alien species can never add to biodiversity.” (Ch 12). He suggests that most examples of harm are caused because human agency alters ecosystems and this provides an opportunity for new (alien) species to thrive where the established species can't (because their environment has been changed which means that “Blaming an alien for filling the gap left by declining natives looks like shooting the messenger.” (Ch 4)

He provides oodles of evidence and gives a short (and easy-to-read) course in biogeography and ecology. He demonstrates that the evidence for alien harm is often based on dubious science: “I was going to say that ... I debunk the myth that alien species constitute the second largest global threat to biodiversity (after habitat destruction). But on reflection I think that assertion has been debunked so often ... that it no longer deserves the status of a myth, and is best described merely as a straightforward lie.” Ch 2)

He lambastes the ridiculous ideas built upon the idea of nativeness as enshrined in laws which don't take account of the fact that most 'invasions' are done without (conscious) human agency: “Nowadays, for plants with the right kind of seeds, socks are a major dispersal pathway.” (Ch 1)

It's very convincing ... and made even better by an author who can really write well and is often very funny

And, of course, it has huge implications for humanity. Who is 'entitled' to the United States: the post-Columbian immigrants or the Native Americans? And the perjorative language used again 'invasive alien' plants and animals resonate quite strongly with the way some right-wing politicians talk about human immigrants. 

Selected quotes:

• “Conservation is a value-laden activity ... ‘Nativeness’ appears to offer the prospect of unambiguous attributes that make something worth conserving; or, in the case of its absence, worth exterminating, or at least controlling. To question this approach is close to heresy.” (Introduction)
• “Species are born, and then they die. That is, is they evolve by natural selection from earlier species, and eventually they go extinct.” (Ch 1)
• “By definition species evolved in one particular spot, but later they may spread to occupy a much wider range.” (Ch 1)
• “Brown tree ... snakes climb pylons and frequently short out power lines, causing power cuts. In fact somewhere on Guam experiences a snake-related power cut about every other day.” (Ch 3)
• “The modern world is essentially a mosaic of new ‘anthropogenic biomes’” (121) This is why “in the last few thousand years, and especially in recent centuries and decades ... being a rat or a weed has turned out to be the golden ticket in life.” (Ch 7)
• “The Wildlife and Countryside Act Schedule 9 ... lists the species that cannot legally be introduced into the wild ... it now includes several species of Cotoneaster ... spread far and wide by birds, none of which can be persuaded to read Schedule 9.” (Ch 8)
• “The difficulty here is the inevitable collision between the law, which deals in black and white absolutes, and ecology, where a grey fog predominates.” (Ch 8)
• “Assisted migration of endangered species is a small step in the direction of allowing them to compete on a playing field that still slopes uphill, but slightly less steeply than before.” (Ch 10)
• “Sometimes it seems many conservationists would prefer a species to go extinct than to survive somewhere it doesn't ‘belong’.” (Ch 10)

Great fun to read ... and eye-opening.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God January 2022; 223 pages

"In the Heart of Prague" by Andrew Pratt

A very competently written police procedural murder mystery.

 A newly retired English cop nicknamed Honza is on holiday in Prague and happens to be on the scene of the murder of an English tourist so he is recruited by the Czech police as a consultant. 

The book is clearly laying the foundation for a series of books. This means that time was invested in describing the setting, detailing the back story of the protagonist, and creating original characters. These things can slow down the pace of the story but add colour and depth and a sense of realism; they are all exactly in line with the conventions of this genre.

A notable feature of the book, one that differentiates this book from many others and has been recognised by other readers as a particular strength of the book,  is that police interviews are rendered as transcripts (including the same explanation of why a retired English policeman is sitting in) which adds considerably to the verisimilitude. 

My only criticism, and the reason for giving four rather than five stars, is that I found the dialogue rather formal. It almost read like a series of witness statements. This made sense for the Czech characters, and there was certainly less formality for the English character, who sometimes used slang, but I felt that, while it made the story clearer, I couldn't tell from the dialogue which character was speaking. 

The structure of the plot conforms perfectly to the four part model with major turning points at the 25%, 50% and 75% points. The revelation of the killer came a little earlier than normal but enabled the final section of the book to move into chase mode.

Selected quotes:

• “I think in English you say it will put hairs on your chest. Over here we just say you need another shot for the other leg.” (Ch 4)
• “'Well, I think you British say, the bird must get the early worm.' 'No, no,' said Jonny, exasperated but being pulled unwittingly into the conversation. 'The saying is "an early bird gets the worm".' 'Exactly, that’s what I said.'" (Ch 5)
• "As age had crept up on him, he had found walking more and more satisfying," (Ch 13)

A well-written whodunnit with a distinctive authorial voice. 

January 2021

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Storm Front" by Jim Butcher

 The first book of the 'Dresden Files' series starring Chicago magician Harry Dresden. 

Harry Potter meets Philip Marlowe. Wizard Harry, a consultant with the Chicago Police Department and a private investigator, is recruited both to advise on a particularly horrific double homicide and to find a missing husband. Inevitably the cases are linked. Battles with demons, gangsters and other wizards result as he races against deadlines imposed both by the police, who soon suspect he is the murderer, and the White Council who believe him guilty of breaking the Laws of Magic.

I understand this genre is fantasy, because magic is involved, but low fantasy in that there are clear rules governing the use of magic, and urban fantasy because of its setting. I find the use of magic reduces some of the tension (because there are fewer limitations on what can be done) and the empathy (because I don't have magical powers) so I find these sort of stories less interesting than other forms of speculative fiction such as scifi. Nevertheless, Harry is a classic wise-cracking hard-bitten detective, adding humour to the tension, and the battle scenes are described with relish. The scene in which a naked Harry was tottering inside a protective shield with a clothed woman who had mistakenly taken a love potion and was trying to make love to him while a demon made ready to kill them both was brilliant.

It's well written with some interesting characters (though only the protagonist can be said to have any degree of complexity) and carefully plotted with twists and turns all the way to the end. I read it in two days, turning the pages fast.

Selected quotes:

• "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face." (Ch 1)
• "Smiling always seems to annoy people more than actually insulting them." (Ch 3)
• "A pure heart and mind only takes you so far - sooner or later the hormones have their say, too." (Ch 5)
• "His fist went across my jaw at approximately a million miles per hour, and I spun down to the dirt like a string-cut puppet." (Ch 7)
• "What you know about women, I could juggle." (Ch 8)
• "I had to maintain a fine balance between going in ready for trouble and going in looking for trouble." (Ch 9)
• "They had the look of lifestyle professionals, the kind that have a career and no kids, with enough money and time to spend on making themselves look good." (Ch 10)
• "I just flew apart into a cloud of a million billion tiny pieces of Harry, each one with its own perspective and view." (Ch 14) This reminded me of the way Klara sees things in a very different book: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
• "Mr Hendricks, beside him, was glaring at me, his single eyebrow lowered far enough to threaten him with blinding." (Ch 17)

January 2022; 307 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Good Terrorist" by Doris Lessing

 It's 1985ish. Alice and her friend Jasper join a squat; it's an old house with no plumbing facilities (so there are buckets full of shit on the top floor), no water, no gas or electricity. The squat is run by fellow comrades in a communist group who want to affiliate to the IRA. 

Alice, despite her rabid denunciations of her fascist parents (on whom she sponges, from whom she steals), is, at heart, a nest-maker and one-by-one she solves the problems of the house, taking on the council and the police and burying the shit in a pit in the garden. Some of her comrades help her, others take advantage. Meanwhile she has a complicated non-sexual relationship with her boyfriend (who takes money from her so he can go cruising). Gradually the story evolves from a manual on how to run a squat into a novel chronicling the manoeuvres of splintered extreme left wing groups and how they are used by foreign governments. The climax of the book is the planning of an act of terrorism.

It is a brilliant read. It evokes the political atmosphere of the 1980s when there were (usually IRA-inspired) acts of terrorism on Britain's streets and when the Soviet Union still existed so that it was possible to believe in the leftist rhetoric of proletarian revolution and fascist reaction. But most of all, the characters in the squat are so well-drawn in all their complexities: the hysterical Faye and her lesbian partner Roberta (who is fundamentally Faye's keeper), the physically and psychologically fragile Philip, Jim who is always so happy except when he is utterly depressed, and, of course, Alice, whose complex relationship with her parents provides a compelling backdrop to her fundamental innocence.

But it is also a portrait of inadequacy and hopelessness.

It is written as a more-or-less continuous narrative, unchaptered (but it is paced perfectly, with the major turning-point almost exactly half way through), in the third person but almost entirely from Alice's point of view (though she is very good at reading the verbal cues and body language of others and inferring motives).

Selected quotes:

• "Against - stupidity - the gods - themselves - contend - in vain." (p 58) This is a quote from The Maid of Orleans Act III, Scene 6, written in 1801 by Frederick Schiller who also wrote Don Carlos.
• "Communes. Squats. If you don't take care that's what they become - people sitting around discussing their shitty childhoods. ... Or is that what you want? A sort of permanent encounter group. Everything turns into that, if you let it." (p 130)
• "It was a thin papery kiss, but she understood that; understood when - rarely - she simply had to put her arms around him in an exuberance of love, the instinctive shrinking, as though she held a wraith, something cold and wailing, a lost child." (p 158)
• "He was white with his hatred. His thin pink lips, which normally she loved for their delicacy and sensitivity, were stretched in a colourless line, and between them showed sharp discoloured teeth. He looked like a rat." (p 160)
• "Affectionate impulses kept attacking her arms; they yearned to embrace him." (p 251)
• "All you people, marching up and down and waving banners and singing pathetic little songs ...  To the people who really run this world, you are a joke. They watch you at it and think: Good, that's keeping them busy." (p 360)

January 2022; 397 pages

This book was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1985

Also by Doris Lessing and reviewed in this blog:

• The Golden Notebook
• The Fifth Child
• Ben, in the World

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. Books by Nobel Laureates reviewed in this blog:

Abdulrazak Gumah (2021)

Afterlives

Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

Klara and the Sun

The Buried Giant

When We Were Orphans

Patrick Modiano (2014)

In the Cafe of Lost Youth

The Black Notebook

Alice Munro (2013)

The View from Castle Rock

Herta Muller (2009)

The Passport

Doris Lessing (2007)

The Golden Notebook

The Fifth Child

Ben, in the World

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1992)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Saul Bellow (1976)

The Victim

Heinrich Boll (1972)

The Train was on Time

Samuel Beckett (1969)

The Expelled; The Calmative;, The End & First Love

Waiting for Godot

John Steinbeck (1962)

Of Mice and Men

Cannery Row

Albert Camus (1957)

The Plague

The Outsider

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Fall

William Faulkner (1949)

Sanctuary

As I Lay Dying

Andre Gide (1947)

The Immoralist

Strait is the Gate

The Vatican Cellars

Hermann Hesse (1946)

Steppenwolf

Demian

Thomas Mann (1929)

Death in Venice

"Leave it to Psmith" by P G Wodehouse

 The fourth and last of the Psmith books and the second of the Blandings Castle series. As usual, Blandings Castle, the stately home of the vague Earl of Emsworth, is infested with imposters, including Psmith who is pretending to be Canadian poet Ralston McTodd, in order to stay at the Castle to have an opportunity of stealing the necklace of Lady Constance, sister of Lord Emsworth, at the behest of her husband as relayed through Lord Emsworth's son Freddy Threepwood. Add to this mix at least one other imposter and at least three other potential jewel thieves, not to mention the suspicions of Lord Emsworth's secretary, the Efficient Baxter, and we have the ingredients for a classic farce.

The plot is ingenious, if ridiculous; the characters are unfailingly innocent (even the crooks) and eccentric. But the joy of the novel is the language. Psmith, as in his previous books, rabbits on endlessly about very little. 

The book being written in 1926, it has the ability for the characters to own revolvers and Freddy frequently quotes the caption cards from the silent movies he watches. There are other topical references:

• "The sun, taken in as usual by the never-failing practical joke of the Daylight Saving Act, had only just set." (7.3)

PGW does recycle material he has used in previous books, for example:

• "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these. 'it might have been'." (3.1) In Mike, chapter 33, Psmith is also speaking thus: “Of all sad words of tongue or pen,” said he, “the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’" (C 33)
• He tells the story of a traveller who, falling asleep over an acorn, wakes up to find himself in the topost branches of a tree and decides "I cannot ... adapt circumstance to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances." I(11.3) n Mike chapter 22, Psmith says: “if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances." 

I think the secret of PGW is that he takes things to extremes. There is never just one imposter, nor is there a single jewel thief. And when he employs a common phrase, he embellishes and ornaments it. For example:

• A character doesn't just 'stiffen', she isn't 'petrified' or 'turned to stone':  "The name Jackson had apparently turned her to marble. It was like the Pygmalion and Galatea business working the wrong way round. She was presumably breathing, but there was no sign of it." (1.2)
• "That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door." (2.1)
• "Miss Clarkson, unless firmly checked, would pirouette round and round the point for minutes without ever touching it." (2.2)
• "It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone - if the earthier members of the community see it coming and have time to duck." (10.1)

Selected quotes:

• "These gatherings of old girls'-school chums are not the sort of function your man of affairs wants to get lugged into. ... the conversation would have dealt exclusively with reminiscences of the dear old school, of tales of surreptitious cocoa-drinking in the dormitories and what the deportment mistress said when Angela was found chewing tobacco in the shrubbery." (2.1)
• "Those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer." (3.1)
• "The sun was shining again in that half blustering, half apologetic manner which it affects on its reappearance after a summer shower." (3.1)
• "These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty." (6.2)
• "Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life." (6.5)
• "It was Psmith's guiding rule in life always to avoid explanations." (6.5)
• "In these modern days when poets are so plentiful ... it is almost impossible to fling a brick in any public place without damaging some stern younger singer." (6.5)
• "She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his eyes open with his fingers and endeavouring to correct a headache with strong tea, that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass, and didn't he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves' bridal-veils." (7.3)
• "The fact that he possessed a brain like a buzzsaw ... renedered the Efficient Baxter a bad sleeper." (11. 2)
• "The Hon. Freddie belonged to that unfortunate type of humanity which automatically gets blamed for everything in moments of stress." (13.2)
• "You never knew with rats. They pretended not to be there just to lure you on, and then came out and whizzed about your ankles." (13.2)

January 2022; 328 pages

Earlier books about Psmith:

• Mike
• Psmith in the City
• Psmith, Journalist

Earlier books about Blandings Castle

• Something Fresh

Other books by P G Wodehouse can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Around the World in Eighty Days" by Jules Verne

 I was inspired to re-read this after watching the first episode of the recent BBC adaptation which utterly changed the story. 

When I first read this book, as a kid, I loved it. Fundamentally, it is a race against time. Phileas Fogg, an English gentleman of fixed habits who is almost catatonic in his reserve, bets that he can travel around the world in eighty days and sets off with his newly hired manservant Passepartout, whose role in the novel is to provide comedy and to do stupid things which will cause delays. On the journey Mr Fogg acquires a tail, a detective called Fix (never Mr Fix!) who believes Mr Fogg is a bank-robber and follows him in the hope that he will land in an English territory where an arrest warrant might be served. During the journey, the travellers rescue a lady from the clutches of murderous savages who becomes the love interest. But the excitement is provided mainly when missed connections require the improvisation of unorthodox means of travel. 

There is also quite a lot of 'travel writing', describing the scenery and customs of foreign lands. For example:

• "Mocha, surrounded by its ruined walls whereon date-trees were growing, was sighted, and on the mountains beyond were espied vast coffee-fields. Passepartout was ravished to behold this celebrated place, and thought that, with its circular walls and dismantled fort, it looked like an immense coffee-cup and saucer." (Ch 9)

The fundamental problem to a modern reader (or a BBC scriptwriter) is that the book was written at the height of the British Empire and the indigenous peoples visited are invariably described in blatantly racist terms:

• "They first passed through the “black town,” with its narrow streets, its miserable, dirty huts, and squalid population; then through the “European town,” which presented a relief in its bright brick mansions, shaded by coconut-trees and bristling with masts, where, although it was early morning, elegantly dressed horsemen and handsome equipages were passing back and forth." (Ch 15)
• "the Indians were in the act of plunging themselves into the drunkenness caused by liquid opium mingled with hemp" (Ch 13) Later Passepartout visits an opium den.

 In addition, the only female character is essentially passive. 

When you add the fact that a large part of the excitement requires that the reader/ viewer realises that in Victorian days steamships and locomotives were cutting edge travel, it makes me wonder why they bothered to adapt this book; why not simply take the premise of a race around the world and write your own tale?

But the first episode added a shoot-out in which Passepartout's brother was trying to assassinate the French president. I suppose the BBC believe that the average viewer is unable to be gripped by the fundamentally simple tensions set up by Jules Verne. They must think that we have degenerated to now be in need of such dumbed-down entertainment.

Selected quotes:

• "Passports are only good for annoying honest folks, and aiding in the flight of rogues." (Ch 7)
• "the days were shorter by four minutes for each degree gone over, Passepartout obstinately refused to alter his watch, which he kept at London time. It was an innocent delusion which could harm no one." (Ch 11) Brilliant foreshadowing; of course the 'inaccuracy' of Passepartout's watch is the key to the twist at the end.

Unusually for Jules Verne, this isn't scifi. It was a classic in its time and it is still a good read but it reveals racist and sexist attitudes that were typical of its time but make uncomfortable reading today.

December 2021

Other books by French authors which have been reviewed in this blog can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"At Night All Blood Is Black" by David Diop

 A Senegalese soldier fighting for the French in the trenches of World War One witnesses the death of his best friend, his "more-than-brother". His terrible revenge tips him over the edge into a madness so extreme that it stands out even in the organised madness of the trenches.

Written in the first person and immersed in the protagonist's perspective, this beautifully written short novel makes use of repeated phrases (such as "more-than-brother", "la terre a personne, 'no-man's-land', as the captain says", and "God's truth") which make the simple narrative into a sort of epic poem.

It is structured with short chapters. There is a major turning point half-way through the novel so that this novel, despite seeming to ramble, is carefully structured.

The author's surname is Diop, which is also the name of the murdered friend, which resonates with the clever (and significant) twist at the end.

Selected quotes:

• "My stench is the stench of death. Death has the stench of the inside of the body turned outside its sacred vessel. In the open air, the inside of the body of any human being or animal becomes corrupted. From the richest man to the poorest, from the most beautiful woman to the ugliest, from the most feral animal to the most harmless, from the most powerful to the weakest." (Ch 3)
• "The rumour spread. It spread, and as it spread it shed its clothes and, eventually, its shame. Well dressed at the beginning, well appointed at the beginning, well outfitted, well medaled, the brazen rumour ended up with her legs spread, her ass in the air." (Ch 6)
• "I had left the door of my mind open to the thoughts of others, which I mistook for my own." (Ch 8)
• "Here, there isn't any real sun. There's only a cold sun that doesn't dry anything. Mud remains mud. Blood never dries." (Ch 10)
• "That's war: it's when God lags behind the music of men, when he can't untangle the threads of so many fates at the same time." (Ch 12)
• "In war, when you have a problem with one of your soldiers, you get the enemy to kill him. It's more practical." (Ch 13)
• "You have to promise me that when you get back you'll stop mutilating the enemy, understood? You will content yourself with killing them, not mutilating them. The civilities of war forbid it." (Ch 13)
• "The captain is a devourer of souls. He showers war with presents, he spoils her with countless soldiers' lives. The captain is a devourer of souls." (Ch 13)
• "Mademoiselle Francois returned my smile right away and her gaze lingered on the middle of my body." (Ch 15)
• "Until a man is dead, he is not yet done being created." (Ch 16)
• "He was as old as the immutable landscape, she was young like the changing sky." (Ch 16)
• "God's truth, my body had experienced all sorts of great joys before Fary. I had felt its power in back-to-back wrestling matches. I had pushed it to the edges of its resistance in long races on the beach after swimming across the river. I had sprayed it with seawater beneath a sun as hot as hell, I had quenched it with cold water drawn from the deep wells of Gandiol after swinging a daba in my father's and Sire Diop's fields for hours and hours. God's truth, my body had known the pleasures of reaching the limits of its power, but never had anything been as powerful as Fary's warm, soft, and moist interior." (Ch 18)
• "My father is a soldier of everyday life who only lived to protect his wives and his children from hunger." (Ch 19)
• "If the hidden story hides too well beneath the well-known story, it stays invisible. The hidden story has to be there without being there, it has to let itself be guessed at, the way a tight saffron-yellow dress lets the beautiful figure of a young girl be guessed at." (Ch 25)

A worthy winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize.

December 2021; 145 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Other winners of the International Booker Prize can be found here. 

Other books about war which are reviewed in this blog can be found on this page.