Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Sometimes, good things come to those who wait. Or even those who leave things sitting on the shelf. As LeoToadstool’s reading of Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners demonstrates:
A book that has been on my shelf at least since my uni days, but one I’ve only got around to now. Written almost entirely in patois (or an approximation thereof) with some Modernist flourishes (including stream of consciousness) it has long been considered the quintessential West Indian London novel. Rather than a single narrative, it is more a series of tragicomic vignettes (told in the gossipy style of a Trinidadian “ballad”) unified by the character of Moses, an old hand and unofficial one-man welfare organisation for the newly-arrived young migrants who soon discover that all that glitters is not gold in the Mother Country. Out of money and work, they take comfort from the less than warm welcome they receive from native Brits in “liming”, weed and casual sex. It truly is one of the great novels of immigration: although it is rooted in the experiences of the Windrush generation, the experiences of Moses and his associates resonate down the decades. My favourite read of the year so far, hands down.
Meanwhile, pubbore has been enjoying A Prayer for Barney Thomson by Douglas Lindsay:
I love these books (it’s the third in the series but the fourth I’ve read) and I can’t understand why he isn’t better known...
Anyway, they’re hilarious, surreal, sweary, deeply tasteless and very Scottish (very Glaswegian) black comedies about an unassuming barber who constantly finds himself (unfairly) implicated in murder. The real joy is the dialogue - a scene in which a management-speak-spouting salesman tries to sell modern business consultancy methods to the two sceptical barbers is the funniest couple of pages I’ve read all year.
“We’re talking the latest in Experio-Millennium Consultative Indoctrination. We’re talking buzzwords, we’re talking maturity model frameworks, we’re talking baseline assessments.”
“You’re talking shite,” says Barney.
“That’s a good point. Let’s park that under a frowny face and come back to it. Shite, that’s a good point.”
On a very different note, jmschrei has found much to value in a book called Immortal for Quite Some Time by Scott Abbott.
[Abbott] calls this book a “fraternal meditation” motivated by a need to come to terms with his brother John’s death from AIDS in 1991, at the age of 40. Only 14 months apart, he and John were raised in a strict Mormon family. Drawing on diary entries spanning more than 60 years, Scott traces his loss of faith, his unhappy marriage, parenthood (he has seven children), and his conflicts with his church. But really coming to a place of peace with his brother’s sexuality and their distance in the latter’s final years, takes decades of soul searching, so to speak. The result is a powerful memoir, told in an effective and unusual way.
It sounds like everythingsperfect is going to be in good shape for our Michael Chabon webchat this week:
Instead of re-reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh yet again for the reading group (four times must be enough) I decided that the time had come for a re-read of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I remember the general drift of it, but the magic is in the details. What a joy it is to be back with Sammy and Joe in New York at the start of their careers. I think I’ll go on a Chabon re-reading binge now, with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union lined up next. And then I’ll be ready for Moonglow by the time the paperback is out.
While I’m doing a bit of cross-promotion, VelmaNebraska has also been looking into last year’s Not the Booker prize winner, Tiffany McDaniel’s The Summer That Melted Everything:
In many ways, this story about intolerance, fear and the charismatic lure of ideologies of hatred, situated in southern Ohio near the border with West Virginia, couldn’t be more timely. In fact, I read the first page on the day of the Charlottesville violence. But. It’s trying a bit too hard; the first person voice and evocation of a specific cultural moment (1984 to be precise) are not always convincing; and the superheated symbolism gets just too busy. Still, not every book can be perfect, especially a first novel, and there’s plenty here to admire. For me, it was the presence of the surprisingly endearing devil at its heart.
Finally, I’m hoping for an update on this from Carlily:
Currently I’m in the middle of The Magus by John Fowles – the descriptions of the Greek island are stunning. I’m withholding further judgement until I finish it, because the plot and the philosophy of the book are both so strange and twisting that I am not sure I can talk about it yet – I feel like anything I think now will be challenged or changed by the end.
The Magus is always fascinating.
Interesting links about books and reading
- John le Carré and Ben Macintyre in conversation
- On Ruskin and champagne socialism.
- Howard Jacobson says Twitter will make children illiterate.
- Is it time for a revival of the revival of Barbara Pym?
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