The last of the Booker longlist (briefly): The Finkler Question, The Betrayal, and In a Strange Room

Ever so happy am I today because I've finished 12/13 books on the longlist, and  I'm officially calling it quits. The thirteenth book hasn't shown up (I see a credit card refund in my immediate future) and because I'm dying to get to my newly-purchased Scandinavian crime fiction novels to take the edge off of my tired brain, I'm bringing down the curtain on the Booker Prize longlist. Ta-da. That's all folks. Nothing to see here -- go back to your homes. Finis.

The final three on the list were The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson, Betrayal by Helen Dunmore, and In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgut. Following are my three very brief reviews.

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson

  1408808870

Bloomsbury

2010

320 pp.

  Julian Treslove is a rather mediocre man who has had a string of unsatisfying and unspectacular jobs (including the BBC radio 3), and now works as a double for famous people.  His best  friends are Sam Finkler, from his school days, and Libor Sevick, former teacher to Treslove and Finkler.  Finkler and the older Libor have both been recently widowed; Treslove has had a rather unsuccessful and boring love life,  and considers himself an honorary widower around his friends.

Finkler is a Jewish pop philosopher on television and in print; he's also a member of  "ASHamed Jews," who take a great deal of pride in being ashamed of other Jews who are ardent supporters of Israel and Zionism.  Libor used to hobnob with the stars in his younger days. After an evening together, which the men spend trying to transport themselves back in time when they had nothing of value to lose (pre-marriage, pre-children), philosophizing about whether or not it's better not to have experienced happiness so that there's little to mourn in the present, Treslove is walking home, thinking about the depths of sadness evoked from that evening.  Out of nowhere he is mugged, and and he thinks his attacker (a woman...oh, the indignity of it all!) made an anti-Semitic remark as she was robbing him. Treslove is not Jewish, but wonders if there was something, unbeknownst to him, which would have caused her to assume he was.  Treslove then makes the decision become a Jew, a decision which changes his life from this point on.  His observations of his friend Sam Finkler lead him to call Jews "Finklers," hence the title.


While the author explores anti-Semitism on the streets of London (even among Jews!) as well as Zionism and Judaism and how Jews define themselves,  this book is also about friendship, love, loss and grief. There's a great deal of ascerbic wit and some incredibly funny moments, but there's also an undertone of deep sadness which runs throughout the entire book that never quite seems to let up. The Finkler Question is a good book, very well written, and one which offers its readers a great deal to think about.

***

The Betrayal, by Helen Dunmore

9781905490639

Penguin

2010

330 pp.

The Betrayal is set in Stalin's USSR, beginning in 1952.  The story focuses on a couple, Andrei, a doctor  and Anna, who teaches at a nursery school.  Andrei and Anna spend their days trying to do what everyone else in that period of time tried  to accomplish (with varying degrees of success):  to keep a low profile while going about their daily work and home lives.  It is becoming increasingly difficult for Andrei and Anna and Anna's younger brother Kolya to do so -- at home, they attract the wrath of their neighbors when Kolya plays the piano and at work, Anna has been told she needs to advance herself by taking some courses at the university.  This is not such a bad thing, but Anna's got secrets that a check on her family background might uncover, and she doesn't want to risk coming to someone's attention.  Andrei also goes through his normal daily routine at work, but  trouble still manages to raise its ugly head when a colleague of his requests that he take a look at a very ill boy.  As it happens,  the boy's father is none other than Volkov, who is one of the highest officers of the Soviet secret police.  Andrei realizes that he is in a most untenable position, especially when it turns out that Volkov's child needs immediate treatment for cancer.  Although everyone he knows tells him to walk away, he finds that he cannot -- with some rather unsettling consequences.


I liked it, but I wasn't wowed, unlike everyone else who seems to have fallen in love with this book and given it 4+ stars.  I know I am the lone stranger here, but I can't help it.  It's not really the author's fault -- it's just that the story was a bit too light for my taste, not as much of an in-depth look at this period as I would have hoped for.   Dunmore is a skilled writer, but if I were going to recommend fiction about life under Stalin, I think I'd go with Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle, Platanov's The Foundation Pit, Vassily Grossman's Life and Fate and Shalamov's Kolyma Tales. But if you like your historical fiction on the lighter side, then you'll probably love The Betrayal.  

***

In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut

9781848873230

Atlantic Books

180 pp.

In A Strange Room consists of three novellas.  The first is called "The Follower," in which the narrator (also named Damon) is in Greece, visiting the ruins at Mycenae, and on the empty road meets a fellow traveler, Reiner, going the other way. They strike up a conversation, and Reiner tells Damon that he has to catch a train that night. However, when Damon arrives back at the hostel where he is staying, he finds Reiner there, having missed his train. Eventually Damon returns home to South Africa where he finds himself thinking of Reiner, and decides to invite him to come and visit. The two decide to travel to Lesotho where they embark on a series of long hikes with unforeseen consequences.  The second story is called "The Lover." Once again Damon is traveling, this time in Zimbabwe -- "no particular reason or intention has brought him here."  At a bar at Victoria Falls he meets a group of fellow travelers on their way to Malawi. He decides to go with them, and realizes that they don't know each other but have only banded together for safe travel. However, he soon ditches this group for another group of three people who he keeps bumping into -- Alice, Jerome and Christian. When the trip is finished, Damon decides to go home rather than to Greece where he's been invited by Jerome and Alice, but is struck with instant regret. So some time later, he takes them up on their offer for a visit to Switzerland. The last story in the book is "The Guardian," which finds Damon heading for Goa (India) with a good friend of his named Anna, "somebody he loves and who makes him laugh.  Somebody he wants to protect." He has promised Anna's partner he would watch over her carefully, because Anna's already "gone off the rails" in the past.  But Anna's troubles cause her to start  “losing the plot, living in fast motion, speeding along” and eventually, things come crashing down, spiraling out of control.

Besides the experience of traveling with someone tying together these three stories, in an interview, Galgut noted that the unifying theme in these stories is that there is a "spectrum" of  categories  people in "intimate" relationships fall into: power, love, and guardianship.  I would add that there's a theme of dashed hopes in a "what could have been" sort of way that seems to run throughout as well.

 In a Strange Room is not a novel filled with action, but rather a story told in a quieter, understated tone.  The narrator relates his story often as if he's watching himself from another vantage point,  so that sometimes he's speaking in the first person, and the telling changes to a third-person narrative, where "I" becomes "he" or "Damon." And as I was reading it, I couldn't help but wonder if this was a disguised piece of autobiography, only to learn after finishing the book in the above-mentioned article that the author believes that

the process of memory is also a form of fiction. Part of the point of this book is that it should be published as fiction and make people reflect on the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.

 And he's absolutely correct, now that I think about it.  I really liked this book as a whole, although my least favorite story was the second one, because it seemed that the longer it went on, the less powerful it became.   What comes out of  this book is honest emotion, which I appreciated.  Definitely recommended.

***

"There is a great deal of wickedness in village life..." -- and St. Mary Mead is no exception

 
Today I am writing as part of the ongoing Agatha Christie Blog Tour, created and hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise. I would like to thank Kerrie for the opportunity to be a part of her tour, because I have been an Agatha Christie fanatic for years.  So now, let's get to it, shall we?

Joan Hickson, my absolute favorite Miss Jane Marple

As Miss Jane Marple has said on more than one occasion, “There is a great deal of wickedness in village life.”

 But who would believe that it's even a possibility in the lovely, quiet and pastoral English countryside? According to Raymond West, Miss Marple's nephew, St. Mary Mead is so boring that he views it as a "stagnant pool, " but  au contraire, as Aunt Jane is quick to note,

 "nothing, I believe is so full of life under the microscope as a drop of water from a stagnant pond."

 (-- Murder at the Vicarage)

And whether gardening or bird watching, collecting money for charity or sitting quietly knitting a sweater for this niece or that cousin's daughter, Miss Marple with the "snow white hair, the pink crinkled face, soft blue eyes"  has seen what teems under the metaphorical microscope and has digested it all, without giving much away.  The Vicar of St. Mary Mead once noted that

"there is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands,"

(-- Murder at the Vicarage)

and time has most definitely been one of Miss Marple's greatest assets.  According to Colonel Melchett, Chief Constable of the County, she  has "hardly been out of the village all her life." Consider how very long that actually is -- and how much she's picked up in her silent study and observation of human nature over the years. 

So let's just take a few moments and examine a few examples of life in the "stagnant pond"  to discover some of  Jane Marple's inspirations that have guided her over the course of  her sleuthing career.  Who are some of the lead players in the wickedness and villainry of this quaint English village? And what have they done?   I present to you an even dozen of the more insidious evildoers that I've ferreted out among the many in trying to dig up the scandals of St. Mary Mead.

• Mr. Badger was  the owner of the chemist's shop in St. Mary Mead, and was somewhat smitten with the young lady who worked for him.  He suggested to his wife, who enjoyed attending seances, that they should let this girl live in their home.  While his wife was away communing with the spirit world,  he proceeded to lavish upon this young woman some great presents including a diamond bracelet. But the Mrs. got the last laugh: it turns out that Mr. Badger's little honey was having a thing with a racecourse punter -- and that the lovely presents were being pawned to support his betting habits.  

• Kindly Nurse Ellerton was taking care of one of the old ladies in the village, and was quite fond of her up until the day she died. Another patient came along, and she also died. As it turns out, Nurse Ellerton was fond of her ladies, but sent them on their way in the "kindest" manner with Morphine.  She, of course, felt that she was doing them a favor, since her patients didn't have long to live anyway. She also justified her actions saying that her patient with cancer was in a great deal of pain.  But before you go and think Nurse Ellerton was killing her charges out of mercy, kindly consider that they all signed over their money to her beforehand. And Nurse Ellerton liked money.

• Mrs. Witherspoon saw nothing wrong with drawing Mrs. Bartlett's old age pension along with her own.  Thinking that people naturally believed that "one old woman was like another," and therefore paid no attention, she felt safe in claiming the money, even though Mrs. Bartlett had been dead for years.  

• Mr. Harbottle's Maidservant got a bit cocky when Miss Harbottle (the master's sister) was called away to take care of a dying relative.  By the time Miss H. returned, the maid had turned in her cap and apron for a place in the drawing room chair, quite above her station.  She had also traded in her broom and mop for conversation and giddy laughter with Mr. H.  Naturally, Miss Harbottle objected and said something to the girl, but Mr. H.gave his sister her marching orders, and she was forced to rent lodgings in Eastbourne. 

•  Mrs. Pusey's nephew traveled extensively and brought back a lot of stuff, or so he told his aunt. In reality, he was bringing home stolen goods, which he asked her to dispose of. Mrs. Pusey doted on her nephew, and was quite happy to oblige. But when the police came to the door and began to ask her certain questions, her loving nephew tried to "bash her on the head" so she couldn't rat him out. 

• Miss Hartnell's laundry woman, Mrs. Pebmarsh quietly availed herself of an opal pin that Miss Hartnell had mistakenly  left on a blouse.  She didn't take it for herself, oh dear me no; simply out of spite (and likely out of jealousy over a man as well),  she hid it in the home of a woman she greatly disliked and then told the police where she'd seen it.

• Major Hargraves was a married, God-fearing churchwarden, very highly respected by most of the villagers.  Imagine their surprise when Hargraves was discovered to have a home separate from the one kept by his wife -- and tongues really begin to wag when it turned out to be with a former housemaid! Granted, when she was in service to Mr. and Mrs. Hargraves she was quite reliable in turning the mattresses every day except Friday, but evidently that wasn't her only talent.  As it turns out, Hargraves and the maid had five children and lived this secret life for some time, and all the while he had the audacity to continue to pass around the collection plate every Sunday!

• Hitting closer to home, there's Miss Marple's own maid Ethel, who, as Miss Marple notes, had a problem with the concept of "mine and thine."  Miss Marple let her go, and even went so far as to write her a decent letter of reference.  However, Miss Marple warned her friend Mrs. Edwards against hiring Ethel, which made Raymond quite angry, saying that his aunt had done a very wicked thing.  But Raymond had to eat his words when Lady Ashton took Ethel on, and came up short a few diamond brooches after Ethel had made a hasty departure in the middle of the night.  

• The bank manager, Mr. Hodson, decided to take a cruise vacation and lost his head. He met and married a woman young enough to be his daughter, without any idea of her background.  To his detriment, he believed only what she told him -- which turned out to be totally untrue. But by then, it was too late.

•  Now let's examine Mr. Cargill the builder, who not unlike modern contractors, tricked people into having more than what they originally wanted done to their houses. When the bills came due, his clients were shocked at the thought of having to cut off their arms and legs to pay him, but somehow he always got them to do so, justifying every pence spent.  But he did have a happy ending of sorts, in that he found a wealthy woman to marry.

• Collecting for the Red Cross, Mrs. Partridge with her twitchy nose managed to embezzle 75 pounds by short changing the accounts, always putting off the rest to be collected until next week. 

•  And last, but definitely not least, was the  Major Bury's beloved, a widow who finally acquiesced to be the Major's bride after ten years of him asking.  She left him high and dry only 10 days before the wedding, when she flew the coop with the chauffeur.

 There are more of these rather sordid types to be found throughout Christie's Miss Marple novels and short stories of course, but well, you get the picture. It seems that St. Mary Mead is more of a microcosm of the much bigger world than I previously realized, and maybe Miss Marple's got it right when she says that

"...most people are too trusting for this wicked world. They believe what is told them. I never do"

and given this odd assortment of shady characters living in St. Mary Mead, I can see why. 

The Long Song, by Andrea Levy

 9780374192174

Frances Coady/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

2010

313 pp.

Well, here's a lesson for me. When I first saw that this book had made the Booker Prize longlist, I was thrilled.  I had read the author's Small Island when it first came out some years back and liked it so I was eager to get into this one.  Then, when I picked it up and started reading it, I was a bit unsure, because my first thought was "oh no, another book about slavery." There's a story behind that remark:  about a year ago, I had read a book about slavery that was emotionally difficult to get through called The Book of Night Women, by Marcus James and frankly, I didn't think I could go there again.  But The Long Song was not at all what I was expecting -- and I ended up being unable to put it down. And while I didn't love it, I liked it very much.

The narrator is Miss July, who was a slave at Amity plantation in Jamaica in the 19th century, as well as a witness to the end of slavery.  At first she's extremely reluctant and even apologetic in describing the night she was conceived, but eventually, her son, who is publishing his mother's memoirs, notes that this didn't last long:

 Although shy of the task at first, after several months she soon became quite puffed up, emboldened to the point where my advice often fell on to ears that remained deaf to it.

And really, July holds nothing back; indeed sometimes her zeal leads her to fabricate, but manages to rein in the "nice" version of her stories to get back to the reality of her life in Jamaica.  She belongs to John Howarth, master of Amity, and works out in the fields until the arrival of Howarth's sister, Caroline Mortimer.  Caroline brought a maid with her from England, but the maid dies shortly thereafter, and Caroline decides to take July in her maid's place. Inside the house, the mischievous and often devilish July is given the name "Marguerite," and with the other house servants, does everything she can to thwart Caroline, including putting a soiled bedsheet on the table instead of the best tablecloth for a company dinner. Her time at Amity runs through The Baptist War or Christmas Uprising of 1831, as well as through the eventual emancipation of all of the slaves in 1838.  In the meantime, a string of overseers come to Amity, ending with Robert Goodwin, whose arrival changes everything about life at the plantation.

The author does not disguise any of the dehumanizing and horrifying aspects of slavery, or the racism inherent among the whites who do not see slaves as people but rather as chattel.  She also examines the color line among the slaves themselves in July's discussion about  Miss Clara,  famous for her white man's boarding house, her dances (to which July would never be invited) and her jams:

Only with a white man, can there be guarantee that the colour of your pickney will be raised. For a mulatto who breeds with a white man will bring forth a quadroon; and the quadroon that enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; and the mustiphino...oh, the mustaphino's child with a white man for a papa will find each day greets them no longer with a frown, but welcomes them with a smile, as they at last stride within this world as a cherished white person....Forward only to white skin became Miss Clara's mission.

Her characterizations are very real, from the slaves to the masters to well-meaning Christian ministers and sympathetic white people. Her sense of place is well evoked.  And even small details become meaningful, especially in one of my favorite parts of the novel: a story about a painting by the artist Francis Bear.  But what really shines through here is the emphasis on the power of storytelling, which is highlighted each time July gives an introduction to what she's writing, addressing herself often as "your storyteller," and even advising her readers that she can't go on, interjecting herself throughout the story:

I can go no further! Reader, my story is at an end. Close up this book and go on about your day. You have heard all that I have to tell of a life lived upon this sugar island. This wretched pen will blot and splutter with ink no more in pursuance of our character July. I now lay it down in its final rest.

But thankfully, she does go on, until her "long song" is finished.  I appreciated the fact that Ms. Levy might have chosen to bring a sappy ending to this story that might have diminished this novel and did not, thereby maintaining the integrity of The Long Song until the final word.
 
I can definitely recommend this book -- it is powerful, extremely well written and it's a story you won't soon forget.

It's Monday! What am I reading?

It's already Monday? Where did the week go? For me most of it was spent flat -- I pulled my back yet again so I laid on a heating pad much of the time.  Oh well -- it was a good way to increase my reading time, if I look on the bright side!  Sheila of Book Journey hosts this very popular part of my reading week -- thank you!

Last week I finished the last three books on the Booker Prize shortlist (two of which I've not reviewed yet, but will get to this week):

The Long Song, by Andrea Levy (which I enjoyed immensely and can definitely recommend)
In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut (which I also enjoyed very much)
The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (which was good, maybe not my favorite of the bunch)

This week I'm planning to finish
Betrayal, by Helen Dunmore -- historical fiction set during Stalin's time in the USSR
and if it gets here on time,
The Stars in the Bright Sky, by Alan Warner.  If it doesn't arrive by the time I finish Betrayal, then we'll call it a Booker Dozen and move on.  And there's a good chance this will happen.

Sadly, by the time I went to Book Depository to pick up Warner's book, they were sold out and so I had to rely on Amazon for a used copy from the UK.  Then to my abject horror, I was looking over my order details a few days after I ordered it, and realized that I had bought it from a seller who never came through with a book I'd ordered a few months ago, but in the meantime had changed their seller name! I should have done my Nancy Drew investigation before ordering the book, but I obviously wasn't thinking.

so, if the Warner book doesn't arrive, then this week I'll be starting a new book called Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End, by Leif G.W. Persson, a Swedish crime novel that's the first of three in a series.  And I'm planning to digest Tony Blair's autobiography A Journey: My Political Life a little at a time as well. 

Next week I think just some well-deserved crime fiction as my reward for the last 2 months.  I have a new one coming from Book Depository called Frozen Moment by Camille Ceder which looks appealing.


AND....I'm giving away a copy of Emma Donoghue's Room -- international entries are welcome!  Don't miss it.

that's it...I'm going to have an awesome reading week!

the longlist progress: T minus 3 and counting....and a giveaway to celebrate

The Booker Longlist 13 -- it's almost over! Yay!

In the wee early hours of this morning I finished Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room, and two days ago I finished up The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson.  So I'm almost finished with the longlist, have one more to go on the shortlist, and plan to celebrate when it's all over with a stack of deliciously mindless horror novels until October 1.

Here's the list so far:


1. C, by Tom McCarthy -- shortlisted

2. In a Strange Room, by Damon Galgut (to be reviewed shortly) --- shortlisted

3. Room, by Emma Donoghue -- shortlisted

4. The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (to be reviewed shortly) -- shortlisted

5. Parrot and Olivier in America, by Peter Carey -- shortlisted

6. Trespass, by Rose Tremain

7. February, by Lisa Moore

8. The Slap, by Christian Tsiolkas
9. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell

10. Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray  -- my favorite of the entire list! I'll repeat my bummedness at it not getting to the shortlist.


Reading now:
11.  The Long Song, by Andrea Levy -- shortlisted


Left to go:
12. The Betrayal, by Helen Dunmore
13. The Stars in the Bright Sky, by Alan Warner

--and now, the fun stuff --

Giveaway of Room, by Emma Donoghue

In honor of finally getting to the last 3 books on the longlist (which was no simple task, mind you), I'm marking the occasion by giving away a copy of Room, by Emma Donoghue.  I will be selecting a winner on September 25th.  If you'd like to try for a chance to win, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post with your blog name by September 24th.  If you don't have a blog, then please leave a comment and send me an email with your contact info.  International entries are welcome.  Note: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SIGN UP AS A FOLLOWER.  I enjoy people's comments, and I really like the wonderful people I've "met" since I started this reading journal, but followership is not mandatory just to win a book!

It's Agatha Christie's Birthday -- happy 120th!

and this is the Google Banner in honor of the special occasion!  Sadly, we can't see it here in the US (I don't know why...does Google think Americans are any less fond of Agatha Christie? Shame on you, Google!)  Here's an article if you're interested.  So if the grande dame were still around, I think she'd be absolutely thrilled that her birth 120 years ago actually had an incredible impact on the world.  A lot of authors come and go, but Christie has been immortalized through her millions of readers, her books and short stories, and by those for whom she was an influence on their own crime-writing careers.

So...happy birthday, Dame Agatha!  It may seem silly to be celebrating the birthday of someone who's passed, but she's given me so many hours of absolute enjoyment for many, many years and continues to do so.

It's Monday! What am I reading?

  It's definitely Monday, so it's time to once again play "What am I reading?" Thanks to my host, Sheila at Bookjourney, for taking this on and doing such an incredible job!

So here goes.  I've been primarily focusing on the novels that were selected for the Man Booker Prize longlist, which I read every year.  I have to say that this year the pickings are quite slim.  I've been amazed by the huge difference in quality from last year's longlist, but what can I say. I'm also amazed at what did NOT appear on the shortlist.

Since I posted last, here's what's been happening:

from the Booker Prize longlist I read

C, by Tom McCarthy -- a very unique read, I must say. This is one that I think would be a year-long graduate course and you still may not get through it. But I liked it.

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray -- definitely one of the best books of 2010.  I have to say I'm shocked it did not go on to the longlist. This book is simply outstanding (and so funny at times you should read it away from others, so you're not embarrassed when you're laughing out loud).

February, by Lisa Moore -- definitely not one of my favorites, but an okay read

Trespass, by Rose Tremain -- this one was very likeable; very dark in tone

off the list: 

The Killer of Little Shepherds and the Birth of Forensic Science, by Douglas Starr. 

read, not reviewed:

Bad Boy, by Peter Robinson - I have to get this review done today!

Currently Reading:

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson (from the longlist)

Coming up this week

The Long Song, by Andrea Levy and In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut, both from the Booker Prize longlist. When I finish those, I'm down to the last 2 (hooray) and life can get back to normal. My brain is nearly fried. 

I nearly forgot: I received (from Schaffner Press) a copy of Acid Christ :Ken Kesey, LSD, and the Politics of Ecstasy, by Mark Christensen that I am going to get to here shortly. I love this stuff!

I sooooo want to get done with the longlist and get back to my usual reading fare -- but I'm sure it won't be too much longer now.  

ta!