Fiction

'Civilisations' is a counterfactual historical novel that attempts to extrapolate the future course of history after changing one pivotal moment of the timeline. I usually find novels like this are great fun, another entertaining example is 'Making History' by Stephen Fry. The novel, originally written in French, won some big awards in France last year. I read the translation by Sam Taylor.

"I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I’d been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves. How many times did I dream of catching a train at night?"

Last year I started to write a review of Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller". I read it while we were in Germany for Christmas. We'd visited Bremen and also undergone the bizarreness of Christmas in another language - the same motifs played out in different words and different customs. I'd tried to write the review in a similar structure to the book but, in a testament to Calvino's writing I couldn't pull it off. Here's the opening paragraph:

"The mind may give up its desire to improve on creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience." John Cage

I decided to create my own deck of creativity cards. I was sick of all the adverts for similar products on Instagram. You know the kind. They're covered in pictures, patterns, and buzzwords. You shuffle the cards and draw them one at a time. As you place each card on the table, the brain’s natural desire to tell stories, create patterns and produce meaning takes over.

I read this book on holiday in Belgium last year. Having forgotten to pack a novel I scoured almost every book in the Waterstones at St. Pancras station before settling on this Booker prize winning novel by George Saunders.

"The Overstory" by Richard Powers piqued my interest among the novels shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And once again the book that interested me most did not win. One year I will succeed in my prediction!

Acts of the Assassins is an interesting novel by Richard Beard that retells the story of the apostles and their deaths. It uses a modern crime genre style and a contemporary setting. The author himself refers to it as "Gospel Noir".

I last wrote about a JG Ballard novel nearly three years ago. That one - "High-Rise" - has since been made into a film. The subject of this post is "The Unlimited Dream Company", my favourite among his novels: a silly romp through suburban sexual repression that glitters with sinister wit. Even after many read-throughs I still can't work out whether it is a crazy masterpiece or something light that we're meant to throw away after reading.

Glow is about a guy called Raf, a Londoner whose life is going nowhere in particular; a state of affairs not helped by “Non-24 Hour Sleep/Wake Syndrome”. One night while experimenting with a new ecstacy-like drug that’s apparently derived from a social anxiety medication for dogs, Raf meets a beautiful girl and then loses her to the crowd in a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. From there a conspiracy evolves involving the titular dog-medication-derived drug, Burmese dissidents, corporate espionage, pirate radio stations, and urban foxes.

Hour of the Star is a short novel by Clarice Lispector, a Ukrainian-born Brazilian author with an interesting life story. This is her last novel and is a remarkable book: inventive, funny, and sad, all at once. I found it in a special selection at the local library dedicated to Brazil because of the World Cup.

I was fifteen when I first read "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac and recently, after twice as much lifetime lived, I was able to watch the film version directed by Walter Salles.

The existence, or impending existence, of a new novel by Thomas Pynchon was announced today. I have all his previous books (seven written over a period of about fifty years, a pace that I definitely approve of), though he’s a hard author to get close to: I’ve only finished three and started four up till now. The unfinished one is, of course, Gravity’s Rainbow (GR) and somewhat perversely, I have two copies of the thing. Of the three unstarted, both Mason & Dixon (MD) and Against The Day (ATD) seem too dense and intimidating, while Vineland just begs me to read The Crying Of Lot 49 (L49) or Inherent Vice (IV) one more time.

Over my holiday I read "Even The Dogs" by Jon McGregor. I've not quite finished it yet but that will at least prevent me from giving away spoilers. I am not sure I would want to give any spoilers anyway because it is unrelentingly grim so far. Perhaps there is a happy ending but both you and I will have to read it to find out.

The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon was written in 1956 and tells of the experiences of West Indian men moving to London for work. It has been described as the definitive novel about the experiences of the Windrush settlers. The narrative centres on a man named Moses who was one of the first to come to London and finds himself the first port of call for many subsequent immigrants:

Form and function, deformation and dysfunction