What next?

So now that I'm done with the Booker prize reading project, what am I up to next? Here is a picture of my to-read shelf, which has been gradually filling up over the past year. Right now I'm pulling out the shortest books so that I can read as many books as possible before the end of the year. My first book club read of the year will be Sisters in Law, about Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

My Best of the Bookers

Between February and December 2018, I read all 53 books that have won the Man Booker prize since its inception in 1968. Here are my personal favorites. Click on links for my reviews.

Booker winners that I marked 5 stars on my Goodreads account:

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood

The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro

Possession, A.S. Byatt

Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

G., John Berger

Amsterdam, Ian McEwan

Vernon God Little, D.B.C. Pierre

Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

Best Plot: The Luminaries. Staggeringly complex plot that ties together nearly 20 main characters. Runner-up: Amsterdam, an incredibly satisfying tale of comeuppance.

Best Historical Novel: Sacred Hunger. A must-read for anyone interested in the impact of the slave trade on people of all colors. Runner-up: Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, that place you in the cunning mind of Thomas Cromwell.

Best Twist at the End: Life of Pi.

Most Original Narration: Lincoln in the Bardo, a compilation of the words of ghosts and quotations from historical sources.

Authors I’m Most Glad I Discovered: Anita Brookner, A.S. Byatt.

Best Also-Rans that Should Have Won: Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go; Ali Smith, The Accidental.

2018 Man Booker Prize Winner: Milkman, by Anna Burns

Anna Burns’ Milkman, the 2018 winner of the Man Booker prize, hooked me at first with its language: stilted and formal, hinting at a post-apocalyptic near future reminiscent of 1984, where everyone checks for bugs in their phones and is not surprised to be photographed while jogging in the park. Most characters are stripped of names and are known only by epithets, such as “the man who didn't love anybody” or “Somebody McSomebody” or “maybe-boyfriend.”

Middle sister, our nameless narrator, is being approached by the milkman. But he’s not really a milkman, he’s a renouncer of the state, and quite high up in the paramilitary pecking order. Anna Burns’ great achievement is recreating the psychological tension of the unwanted attention that without words or violence still constitutes harassment. See the progression in this string of quotes I highlighted from early in the book to almost the end:

“I couldn’t be rude because he wasn’t being rude … Why was he presuming I didn’t mind him beside me when I did mind him beside me? ... I did not know intuition and repugnance counted, did not know I had a right not to like, not to have to put up with, anybody and everybody coming near … So shiny was bad, and ‘too sad’ was bad, and ‘too joyous’ was bad, which meant you had to go around not being anything … I came to understand how much I’d been closed down, how much I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man.”

The sad parallel that Burns draws is between the one-on-one intimidation of a woman by a man, and the similar constant harrying of a terrorist state (presumably Ireland in the 1970s), in which the citizens become used to unspoken rules, constant surveillance, and an ever-present threat of violence.

The comparison, and its conveyance through nameless characters in absurd situations, is brilliant. Nonetheless, the plot started to lag about halfway through, and I had to push through to the end.

Now I have read every single Man Booker prize winner since its inception fifty years ago in 1968. My future goal is to read the winner every year, and perhaps the shortlisted books as well. Next post: my personal Booker favorites.

Now reading the Man Booker prize winner of 2018

Booker Book #52: Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders

I have loved the writing of George Saunders ever since I was introduced to him by a former colleague, who used his story “The Falls” in a high-school American lit class. Each of his short stories is unique and thought-provoking, sort of a hybrid of Raymond Carver’s bluntness and David Foster Wallace’s intricacy.

Lincoln in the Bardo is one of the most original novels I have ever read. It is mostly told in two alternating forms: historical narrative composed of an accretion of related quotations from presumably historical sources, and narrative spoken by ghosts in a graveyard.

Here’s the premise: During the early years of the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, one of the Lincolns’ sons, Willie, got sick and died. He is taken to a Washington, D.C., cemetery for interment. There we meet several dead-but-not-departed, who linger between this world and the next.

The novel focuses on the ghosts’ attempts to help Willie move on the next world, as awful things happen to child spirits who linger. The result is a fascinating peek into the Great Emancipator’s mind.

It’s a quick and easy read, shorter than your typical 343-page book, because of the space between the quotations, reminiscent of the spaces between graves in a graveyard.  

And with that, I have finished the Booker Project! I still have ten days left in 2018, so look for my review of this year’s winner, Milkman, as well as my personal favorites recap before year’s end.

Now reading the LAST Booker Book!

Booker Book #50: A long, drawn-out history of a bunch of killings

Well, the book is actually called A Brief History of Seven Killings, but my title is more realistic. Parts of James Marlon's book are excellent (for example, the chilling chapter told from the point of view of a man being buried alive), but I would not have missed parts of it at all.

The story is at first about an attempt on Bob Marley's life, which left him wounded but not dead on the eve of a peace concert; the narrative then expands to include drug gangs that made crack into big business in the US. The story is told from the points of view of myriad characters: not just the would-be killers and other gangsters, but also CIA agents in Jamaica, one of their Jamaican girlfriends, an American journalist, and even a ghost.

Perhaps as a woman I'm biased, but my favorite character is the girlfriend, who also once slept with The Singer, as he is known. She witnessed the attempt on him and spends the rest of the book fleeing and using false names. I like her persistence and cunning in the face of violence.

However, many of the other characters began to blur together for me. Nonetheless, I'm glad I finished the book, as some loose pieces came together at the end. And I learned a lot of Jamaican slang, in which the worst curse word is a term for menstrual pad!

Three little quotations:

"Jail is the ghetto man university."

"Peace can't happen when too much to gain in war."

"...the quickest way to not live at all is to take one day at a time."

Booker Book #47: Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

Bring Up the Bodies is the sequel to Wolf Hall, the 2009 Booker prize winner by Hilary Mantel. The first book tells of the rise of Anne Boleyn, as she eclipses Catherine of Aragon. This is the beginning of Henry VIII's Reformation, which gives birth to the Church of England. But what goes up must come down, and Bring Up the Bodies describes the other side of that meteoric climb: Anne’s fall from grace as she is eclipsed in turn by Jane Seymour, because Anne could not deliver a son and heir. Ironically, it is her child Elizabeth who will eventually claim the throne, but that is not part of this story.

I haven't mentioned the hero of both books yet, but it is not any royal personage; it is Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is the instrument of the King’s desires, but also an able and subtle influencer with a Midas touch. When the king wishes to put Catherine aside and bring Anne up, Cromwell makes it so. And when the king tires of Anne and wishes to put her aside, again it is Cromwell to the rescue. Despite this description he is no ruthless brute, but a modern man who favors education for women, among other causes, and I grew to like him very much.

Two technical comments. First, I have to wonder if Hilary Mantel heard many complaints about her overuse of an ambiguous “he” in the first book, because here she often (over?) clarifies with a “he, Cromwell,” as in “he said, he, Cromwell....” Second, the title phrase does not refer to digging up dead bodies, but to bringing forth prisoners from the Tower for trial. Yes, they may likely be dead soon, but they're not dead yet. 

At any rate, the story is told in exquisite historical detail and yet in a present tense that keeps the reader in the moment, and almost always in suspense. I found both books to be enthralling masterworks of historical fiction.

Starting penultimate book of the project: Booker Book #50!!!

There were 52 books when I started, and now there are 53. I read #51 with my book club. Reading #53 this year is not part of the original project, but it would be icing on the cake. :)

Booker Book #49: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan

How to find words dark enough to describe a book like this? Harrowing and blood-curdling feel like clichés. The Narrow Road to the Deep North is the tragic -- and new to me -- story of the soldiers who slaved in forced labor camps for the Japanese during World War II.

Much like their Jewish counterparts in Europe, these thousands of men, mostly Australian, were fed the absolute minimum, denied basic sanitation or medical care, and worked to death in the cholera-infested jungles of what would become Thailand. The stories of the beatings and vivisections are heartbreaking; this is not a book for the faint of heart.

But it is an honest and sobering exploration of war and what it does. Some of the characters whitewash their memories; for others, the war becomes the only memory. One of the Japanese officers turns his life around. Some are punished for war crimes, some escape. The world moves on.

“…the world organises its affairs so that civilisation every day commits crimes for which any individual would be imprisoned for life…You are never free of the world; to share life is to share guilt.”

Now reading Booker Book #49 of 52!

Booker Book #48: The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

This is an extraordinary book, a tour de force. So many superlatives:

•         It definitely wins my Booker Prize for most intricately plotted.
•         Catton was the youngest author to win the Man Booker, at 28.
•         At 800+ pages, it is the longest book to win the prize.

The Luminaries begins in a New Zealand goldrush town in 1865, where a secret council of twelve men is interrupted by a thirteenth accidental arrival. This is a tried but true narrative device: the council of twelve must explain their business to the newcomer, and what a mysterious business it is!

The council is assembled to unravel a tangled web of murder, love and betrayal; gold and opium, lost and found; infidelity and bastards. Parallels and doubling abound. The story is explicitly arranged like a zodiac, but implicitly in a spiral, that archetypal shape of New Zealand symbology: the first section is the longest, and each successive section is shorter and shorter, until we are rushing headlong down a vortex to the dizzying center. Catton highlights the technique with humor: the italicized summaries at the beginning of each chapter, relics of a previous literary era, grow and grow until they are longer and more informative than the chapters themselves. So much subtle cleverness.

I hope Catton publishes again soon. She is at the top of my list of Booker winners to watch.

Now Reading Booker Book #48

...and still listening to Booker Book #47.

Booker Book #46: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending is the third and final of the Man Booker Prize winners that I read before beginning this project. I was frustrated by the book the first time I read it. I am glad that this project led me to read it again, though I am still scratching my head.

This is a dense and deep, though short, examination of memory, time, and consequence. Narrator Tony tells a story that began with meeting his friend Adrian in high school. As high school friends do, they drifted apart. Then, in university, Tony dated Veronica. Later, Adrian dates Veronica. Much later still, Tony receives a mysterious bequest from Veronica's mother. And so begins a sordid mystery that Tony must patiently resolve.

It's an interesting book with a controversial ending. But is it really an ending, or just a "sense" of an ending? You'll have to read it yourself to find out; at about 160 pages, it won't take long.

Now REreading Booker Book #46: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

Yes, I have reached the "sense of an ending"! I am re-reading Booker book #46 of 52, while continuing to listen to #47, Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel.

Booker Book #45: The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson

Let me clear this up right away: “Finkler,” in this novel, is a character’s code word for Jew. Julian Treslove has two Jewish friends, and falls in love with a Jewish woman. In fact, after being mugged by a woman who says something that he hears as “You Jew,” he begins to think he is Jewish.

The Jewish characters help explore the two sides of the Zionist debate, and it is clear which side Jacobson wants us to be on. Sam Finkler is a pop culture philosopher who joins the Ashamed Jews, who protest the Isreali takeover of Palestine and particularly Gaza. Finkler is an empty, clownish figure, whose wife cheats on him with his friend Julian. Finkler’s wife tells her husband to get off his high horse: now that Isrealis have their own country, “they are now just ordinary bastards, half right, half wrong, like the rest of us.”

The other Jewish characters, Julian’s friend Libor and lover Hephzibah (aka Juno), are more interested in simply being Jewish and celebrating the positive. Hep is working on opening an Anglo-Jewish culture museum, which she insists is NOT another Holocaust museum. I liked Hep more than any of the male characters, by the way.

However, the fact that the author uses Finkler’s name in the title to stand in for Jewish, and not one of the other two characters’ names, seems to indicate that the world sees Jewishness in the negative way represented by Finkler. It’s an interesting story of friendship and love and I learned a lot about anti-Zionism, though I still don’t feel well informed enough to take sides.

Booker Book #51: The Sellout, by Paul Beatty

My book club graciously agreed to read another Booker Prize winner with me. We chose The Sellout by Paul Beatty because it was supposed to be hilarious. It is, but in a very different way than I expected.

This is an over-the-top satire about racism in America. Our protagonist and narrator, Mr. Me, aka Bonbon or The Sellout, was raised in Dickens, a ‘hood outside L.A., by his father, who subjected him to all sorts of psychological experiments, mostly involving racism. Besides being a psychology professor, dad is the neighborhood “N-word whisperer.” Now, as a sympathetic white girl, I don’t think I get to throw the N-word around. If that word, or the f-bomb, makes you cringe, this is not the book for you.

After Prof. Me is shot down by police, the younger Me inherits the farm and the role of whisperer, though he’s not as skilled as dad. Where he comes into his own is when he cooks up a brilliant idea to boost the local school’s scores through the roof. The only problem: it involves segregation.

This novel reads at times like a series of independent essays, riffing on The Little Rascals, the creative cultivation of marijuana and watermelon, gangsters, and any other race-tinged trope that comes to mind. It is an honest but scathing look at the whole shitty system, and everyone’s part in it, including African-Americans’.

This was the first American book to win the Booker prize after it was opened to all books published in English, outside the British commonwealth. If you like it, I also recommend Percival Everett’s Erasure, which includes a send-up of Native Son, and Pym, by Matt Johnson, which includes a racial dystopia in Antarctica. 

Seven books left, two in progress (in print and on audio) and one a re-read. So close!

Now reading Booker Book #45 and Listening to Booker Book #47

Booker book #44: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, is not really the story of Wolf Hall at all. It is the story of Thomas Cromwell, counselor to King Henry VIII during the English chapter of the great Protestant Reformation.

The story begins with young Thomas on the ground looking at his father's boot. Not surprisingly, young Thomas runs away, to become a soldier, a wool trader, and eventually a lawyer. It is in that capacity that he serves Cardinal Wolsey, counselor to King Henry. When the Cardinal dies, Thomas's great intellectual and psychological abilities, especially his gifts in finance, allow him to become one of the king's most intimate advisors and thus one of the most powerful and wealthy men in the realm.

Meanwhile, all the drama of the King's predicament is swirling around the court. The Reformation is afoot, and King Henry wishes to divorce his first wife in order to marry his second. What's curious is that Wolf Hall is the ancestral home of his third wife, Jane Seymour, whom he hardly glances at in this book, which ends before the death of second wife Anne Boleyn.

The book is written in a unique style, unlike any other historical fiction I have read. There are plenty of concrete historical details, yet the narration can be poetically abstract. I enjoyed learning more about this historical period; however, I did find the narration confusing at times. So many characters have the same first names, and so many characters are also known by a title. Usually "he" or "him" refers to Cromwell, but occasionally a first person "I" creeps in.

Nonetheless, I really felt that I knew and liked Cromwell...well after these 600 pages, and I'm looking forward to spending 12 CDs with him as I listen to the sequel, Bring up the Bodies, on audiobook. This second installment also won a Booker prize, in 2012.

Now reading Booker book #44

What have I gotten myself into? This book begins with a five-page list of characters, and two pages of family trees. But I am excited to learn more about Thomas Cromwell.

Booker Book #43: The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga

The white tiger is an animal that comes along only once in a generation. It is the nickname of our hero, a servant who observes and imitates his masters, to become an entrepreneur. The entire novel is written in the form of a letter to a Chinese official planning a visit to India, and it exposes India's corruption and mistreatment of servants.

White Tiger is the gripping tale of what the downtrodden will do to survive. It should strike fear in the hearts of exploiters everywhere. I found it much more engaging than most of the other Indian novels on the Booker list.

My reviews are getting shorter, as is my time to finish the Booker winners before the end of 2018! I have 8 left to read (one's a short re-read, but three are VERY long), and one to listen to. Wish me luck! 

What the Hell Happened in 2005?

Take a look at the short list for the Man Booker Prize in 2005:

John Banville, The Sea

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George

Sebastian Barry, A Long, Long Way

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Ali Smith, The Accidental

Zadie Smith, On Beauty

Kazuo Ishiguro had already won for The Remains of the Day (1989), which was phenomenal, and he would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Never Let Me Go (click on title for my review) is an incredibly original speculative book about child clones being raised to be organ donors. It addresses many of the same topics that arose in Remains – class, the master/servant relationship – and the two books are even stronger read together. Never Let Me Go shoulda been a contender.

And I just finished listening to The Accidental on audio book. Talk about original! It’s the story of the ironically named Smarts: professor Michael, writer Eve, teen bully Magnus, and pre-teen bully victim Astrid. A fifth wheel, Amber, careens into their lives and throws them all for a loop. Each character has a unique voice, not just as a person, but as a literary invention. Eve speaks in question-and-answer interview format like the historical recreations that she writes; literary Michael speaks an entire chapter in verse; Magnus has an alter ego named “Hologram Boy”; and twelve-year-old Astrid is still seeking a voice, trying out phrases like “typical and ironic” and “i.e.” And Amber speaks in movie allusions, since she was conceived in a cinema.

It’s an amazing book, as Astrid would say. It addresses not just bullying, but adultery, writer’s block, and the ways in which we are vulnerable to the kind of fraud Amber commits on the whole family. It shines with motifs of light, photography, and cinema. I found it far more complex than The Sea, and the twist at the end has a much more satisfying kick to it. I highly recommend it, and I can’t believe that Banville won over Smith and Ishiguro. Harumph.

Booker Book #42: The Gathering by Anne Enright

Veronica, the protagonist of The Gathering, is one of twelve siblings. She has come back to her mother's Irish home to announce the death by suicide of her brother Liam; the gathering of the title is his wake.

Veronica proceeds to try to unravel why Liam ended up killing himself. Her memories are vague and her mother is, too. She remembers an incident of sexual abuse but can't quite pin down to whom it happened.

This is a story about the difficulties of family relationships, especially in large families, including the guilt of moving up in social class, leaving some family members behind. It's also an interesting enough book about the slipperiness of memory, with a bit of a sentimental ending that I won't spoil for you.

Just 10 more to go!!!

Booker Book #41: The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai is a beautifully written novel about people of India: those who are born there, those who live there, those who leave and those who want to leave. One of the central characters, Sai, has been raised in India, but in a Western convent. She goes to live with her grandfather, who returned to India as a judge after being trained in England. The grandfather finds he and Sai have much in common. Another main character, Biju, has left India to pursue the American dream, which turns out to be sleeping on a table in the cheap restaurant where he works and getting no medical treatment for an on-the-job injury. Others are immigrants who are kicked out when the locals try to create an independent state. It seems the population is in a frustrated flux, with people who want to go unable to leave, and those who want to stay being evicted.

I found this novel too sprawling and slow, like Midnight’s Children, which I also didn’t enjoy very much. And yet, despite the long unfurling of the plot, I still did not feel that I got to know the peripheral characters well – I could still barely tell them apart by the end. The “Indian” novels I’ve enjoyed most so far in this project have been by Englishmen: The Siege of Krishnapur and Staying On. I also loved The God of Small Things, which has a tighter, more Western-style plot-with-a-twist, and was a bestseller here in the U.S. So maybe my novel sensibilities are just very Western. I am still glad that this project is pushing me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to read novels I wouldn’t otherwise.

Booker Book #37: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel (2002)

This book is out of order because 1) I listened to it on audio CD, which takes me a lot longer than reading; and 2) I’ve been stewing about it for a few days.

Pi (short for Piscine, which is French for swimming pool, which foreshadows the extraordinary amount of time Pi will spend in the water) is the son of an Indian zookeeper. When the father decides to take his family to Canada, a few animals come with them, headed for new zoos. Unfortunately, their ship sinks.

I think most people who haven’t been living under a rock will not be surprised by this next part, but in case you do have a comfy reading nook with Internet under a wedge of basalt or granite somewhere: surprise! Pi ends up alone on a lifeboat with a tiger. Actually, a tiger, a zebra, an orangutan, and a hyena, but boy and tiger are the big winners in this very short game of battle royale.

Now, in order to talk about why I’ve been stewing about this book, I must announce:

THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD. If you don’t want to see them, skip to last paragraph.

You’ve been warned. So, Pi learns how to cohabit on a 30-foot lifeboat with a full-grown tiger. The way he does this is all very interesting and scientific; the youngster has luckily read a lot about zookeeping and circus training. The reason I started this book a few years back and put it down is because I could not swallow Pi’s Pollyanna attitude. He could not stop plugging religion – and not just one faith, but three.

Pi is a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian, and cannot stop praising all his many gods for this and that. Even in Pi’s darkest days, his faith never wavers. I find that completely implausible: that a person tested by seven harrowing months lost at sea with a huge carnivore would never waver in his religious belief. It would not matter to me whether he came through this test with or without his faith intact. An interesting protagonist develops, and we don’t see Pi develop. Like his faith, he simply endures.

Finally, and this is the BIGGEST SPOILER OF THEM ALL (you’ve been warned again), the book strongly implies that the tiger is a metaphor for Pi himself. At the end of the novel, Pi tells a second version of his story in which we can recognize the orangutan, the hyena, and the zebra in three human characters. This is a more blood-chilling and tragic story, because it involves humans struggling together and against each other for survival. It is tragic, and we can definitely understand why Pi would have preferred to live with animals, who can only be accused of acting on instinct when they kill. At first, I felt let down and cheated, because I had failed to see the hidden alter ego. But then I thought of a few great stories that use a similar device that I also didn’t notice: the movie “Fight Club,” the movie “Black Swan” (I’ll refrain from ruining anything else for you rock dwellers who are still reading) and I realized this was really a tour de force, though I still want the part with the tiger to be real.

SUMMING UP WITHOUT SPOILERS:

So, this was a mixed experience for me. On the one hand, I was frustrated by the novel’s religious aspect. On the other hand, the metaphorical twist was clever and unexpected. The story itself is original and replete with fascinating detail. I look forward to seeing what the movie does with this incredible novel.

Now reading Booker book #41

Booker Book #40: The Sea [Again] by John Banville

Apparently, when white British males feel alone, they head for the sea. In this fortieth Booker Prize winner, The Sea, by John Banville, the protagonist Max is recently widowed, and returns to the seaside scene of his first childhood love. Looking at just those bare bones, this book has much in common with The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch. However, despite their similar names, the books could hardly be more different. While Murdoch's novel is a frenetic romp, Banville's is all melancholy lyric and languor.

Banville’s book is also similar to Holiday by Stanley Middleton, in which a man struggling with his marriage seeks solace at a childhood sea resort; and even with Troubles, by J.G. Farrell, in which the Irish conflict impinges on another seaside resort and young romance.

At The Cedars, the house once rented by his childhood love's family, Max wrestles with his increasingly unreliable memory and retells, haltingly, two stories of loss: that of his wife Anna, and that of his first love Chloe.

The writing is beautiful and poetic. Banville makes up words like “coldening” unselfconsciously while waxing philosophical on the meanings of life and death, memory and imagination. And the plot twists are as breathtaking as an undertow.

Now Reading: Booker book #40

Booker Book #39: The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst

The protagonist of The Line of Beauty, Nick Guest, is aptly named: he reminds us of Nick Carraway, the middle-class observer of Gatsby's high life; and he is a guest, at the home of a Member of Parliament. He is also a gay man in the 80s, anxiously pursuing sex for the first time in the years just before AIDS rears its ugly head.

Nick has been invited to the conservative MP's home ostensibly as a friend of their son's, but his secret mission is to keep an eye on their mentally unbalanced daughter. Our protagonist pursues beauty and romance, while the straight and respected around him have affairs and hide mental illness. The hypocrisy is glaring, as well as a setup for heartbreak: the lower class but well-educated loyal dependent comes to think he is part of the family; sadly, blood and money turn out to be much thicker than water. The novel explores gay love and lust, Thatcherism, and social prejudice in England.

Hollinghurst's writing is beautiful, including the graphic sex scenes. I was reminded of the understated sophistication of Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children.

Booker Book #38: Vernon God Little: A Big Little Book, by DBC Pierre

This is a great book. A great f***en book, as our hero, Vern, would say. Vernon Gregory Little is a little guy accused of a big crime: the mass murder of over a dozen of his Texas classmates. But he didn’t do it. He just can’t prove it.

Poor Vernon is trapped in a web of loyalty: to a sad mother, who falls for the scumbag televising his case; to a girl who passed out at a party; to a father whose body can’t be found; to the bullied friend who actually did the shooting. He’s the sweetest kid you’d ever hope to meet on death row.

Vernon’s desperate attempt to escape his fate is both gritty and lyrical. And up until the last ten pages, I had literally no idea how it would end. Pierre brings all the pieces together masterfully, and Vernon recreates himself as (almost) a god. Poetic writing and a show-stopping plot, plus a quirky character you can’t help but love: it’s definitely worth the read to see how Pierre pulls it off.

Now LISTENING to: Booker Book #37

So I tried reading Life of Pi a couple years ago. I didn't finish it, for reasons I won't go into now, because I don't want to prejudice you against it. This time around, I'm trying to finish it as an audio book. Wish me luck!

Now Reading: Booker Book #38

Having finished book number 36, I am ready to tackle book 37, Life of Pi. This is the only Booker book that I started to read but could not finish. So I'm going to give it a second chance as an audio book. However, I am in the midst of listening to another audio book, That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo (which I'm really enjoying, by the way). So I'm skipping ahead to book number 38 now.

Booker Book #36: True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

I'll tell you up front that I liked this book better than Peter Carey's previous Booker Prize winner, Oscar and Lucinda, which I found frankly boring, as I did not find either character likable or compelling. However, I am relieved to report that I enjoyed True History of the Kelly Gang.

Ned Kelly is the Robin Hood of Australian folk history. An actual historical figure, Ned was the son of Irish immigrant parents who struggled to make their way in the colony. Ned recounts his childhood of poverty, with multiple siblings and a dad in jail, and later apprenticeship to a bushranger, or highway robber. Ned tries to go straight but finds this very difficult for a person of his class. Finally, the Kelly gang coalesces, out of necessity rather than anyone's intention.

The story is told in a style that I found off-putting at first: it is very similar to How Late It Was, How Late, by James Kelman, but True History is not exactly stream-of-consciousness. It is simply the product of a mostly self-educated immigrant, writing sentences with little punctuation. Even by the end of the book, I was having trouble finding where one sentence ended and the next began. This run-on narrative, presented as found parcels, like scrapbooks, is occasionally interrupted with news articles, comments by Ned's wife, and even a couple of pages torn from a collection of Shakespeare's plays. Of course, True History is not really true, but fictionalized.

I found the story and the characters compelling. I felt great sympathy for Ned, his family, and friends. I am glad to have met this Australian folk hero, and to have learned more about the plight of the Irish in early Australia.

Now reading Booker Book #36

Booker Book #35: The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood

Two young women, raised in relative isolation, meet an attractive, mysterious young man. What happens next involves sex, secrets, and sacrifice. In The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood weaves together multiple story strands as skillfully as A.S. Byatt does in Possession: the view from the present and the vintage love story are interspersed with news articles about war in Europe and local tragedy that enhance the threatening mood.

Fans of the author of The Handmaid's Tale will recognize recurring motifs: Atwood's cunningly analytical take on language; religious delusions; the ways society exploits women; and the ways women resist. Her science fiction also makes an appearance in the pulp stories penned by the mysterious young man.

This is a masterful novel, with a reveal as slow and enticing as a skillful burlesque show. I am so grateful this project required me to reread it. I hope that Atwood wins the Nobel Prize in literature soon, as the most recent winner Kazuo Ishiguro said she should have.

Now reading Booker book #35

Booker Book #34: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace

Coetzee was the first author to win the Booker prize twice: first in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K, about a young South African man of color trying to leave a terrifying city life to return to the country. One might say that Disgrace is similar in a way, since it is about another man who retreats from the city to a farm. However, Coetzee’s second booker winner (1999) reminds me more of Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974), because both feature a privileged white South African man. Disgrace’s protagonist, professor of communications David Lurie, has not chosen his retreat: he is rather in exile, or disgrace, for sexual harassment of a student. This must have been one of the first novels to deal with the growing political correctness that began to be felt in the 1990s.

After David has his brief and selfish affair with a student, and refuses to cooperate with the investigative committee, he resigns and goes to his daughter’s farm and kennel. He begins to rebuild his life, volunteering and writing, until he and his daughter are attacked by local thugs. The two crimes and their aftermath are vastly different…or are they?

I try not to read too much about a novel before I finish it, preferring to form my own opinions. But as soon as I finished this one, I turned to the front matter: a page of extracts from reviews. The words that jumped out at me were “cold” and “uncomfortable”; “perplex” and “disturb.” I agree with all of those. I also try to refrain from too much interpretation in these reviews, in order to let my reader (readers, I hope!) form *their* own opinions. But I must say that this novel, lean as it is, is rich with symbolic material about fathers and daughters, crime and penance, even dogs and people. It is about a world in which the sexes, races, and species are overcoming centuries of inequality. It’s a slow and painful process.

Booker Book #33: Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan

Ian McEwan is one of those fabulous writers, like Ann Patchett, whose books are each unique. He writes with convincing authority about realms as divergent as music composition, underworld thugs, and wartime nursing. I have been looking forward to reading a new Ian McEwan book since the beginning of this project, and I was not disappointed.

Weighing in at just under two hundred pages, Amsterdam is a lightweight of a novel, but it could stand up to anything by O. Henry in a championship fight. It is brilliantly plotted, bitingly witty, and breathtakingly ironic.

Amsterdam is the story of two men whose friendship reaches a new level after the death of a woman they both loved. It is a meditation on friendship and selfishness, hypocrisy and ethics, success and revenge. I wouldn't spoil a page of it for you, but just to whet your appetite, you will find an editor double-crossing, a politician cross-dressing, and...oh, just read it.

Booker Book #32: The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

The god of small things is not a god, he’s a man, and an Untouchable man, at that. Velutha, a member of the lowest Indian caste, wins the hearts of three characters (and the reader) in this sad tale.

Velutha first wins over Ammu, daughter of a factory owner, when they are both children. He makes her intricate toys, “small things,” which he must offer on the palm of his hand, so she doesn’t have to touch him. Velutha grows up to become a gifted engineer and carpenter who would be running the factory if not for his social status. He later wins the hearts of her children, who belong to a new generation and may play with him, not just snatch his presents.

When Ammu comes home after her divorce, she sees Velutha in a new light. But in India, the “Love Laws” are strong, and cross-caste love is the most harshly judged. The children will suffer for their mother’s transgression.

This is a powerfully told story that encapsulates much about India’s attitudes toward class, women, and relationships. Told in large part from the points of view of Ammu’s twin children, we readers must puzzle through their misunderstandings of what is going on around them.

The writing is lyrical and sparkles with word play. I enjoyed this novel more than Rushdie’s, and found in it echoes of Michael Ondaatje’s work on Sri Lanka. A Booker classic.

Now Reading Booker Book #32

Booker Break #2: Educated, and One Thousand White Women

I had to take a break from the Bookers to read a book for the school where I teach, and a novel for my neighborhood book club.

Educated by Tara Westover is in itself an education. Westover is the youngest of seven children in a family of Mormon survivalists. She grew up in Idaho, supposedly homeschooled, but basically only able to read and write. Her father ran a junkyard in which the children were regularly injured; her mother mixed essential oils which did nothing to heal the injuries; and one of her brothers beat her regularly. This memoir is the story of how a person raised in dogmatic isolation finds the strength to question her reality.

Westover manages to attend college, even though she never spent a day in high school, and the world opens up to her. She and her siblings all took one of two radically different paths: stay home and follow in their parents’ footsteps, or get away and get an education. I am so grateful that Ms. Westover chose the latter, and shared her story about embracing uncertainty.

In a completely different genre, I received a free copy of One Thousand White Women by Colorado author Jim Fergus, and recommended it to my neighborhood book club. It is a strange read. The cover made me think I’d be reading something like the recent retelling of the Little House series through Ma’s eyes, Caroline, by Sarah Miller. Not quite.

The premise of White Women is based in fact: a few years after the Civil War, a Cheyenne chief proposed that his tribe should exchange one thousand horses for one thousand white brides, so that they would bear his tribe’s children and raise them in the white culture. This, of course, never came to pass, but Fergus asks, what if it had?

Our heroine, May Dodd, joins the band of white women (which ends up counting only about fifty women, not a thousand) in order to escape the asylum where she has been confined against her will for promiscuity. She meets a motley crew of other women who make up a blatantly stereotypical microcosm. It is as if Fergus gave these two-dimensional characters the most obvious names as placeholders while he wrote, then forgot to go back and change them. We have the brazen Irish twins, who share the last name Kelly; the impoverished and jilted Southern belle, Daisy; the stout Swiss maid, Gretchen; the proud, strong ex-slave Phemie; etc., etc.

The women meet and marry their braves and quite quickly (perhaps implausibly so) become enamored of their new culture. Like “Dances with Wolves,” White Women presents a mostly positive portrait of the “noble savage.” U.S. policy certainly deserves the critique, but the delivery is not what one might call nuanced.