Lost in a Good Book

Synopsis: Thursday Next, literary detective and newlywed is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this - but bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible? Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastadon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan. But whose? and why?

Review: Excellent. If anything I loved this more than the first book. I think they get more and more addictive. Extremely inventive writing, I just loved Jasper's version of Miss Havisham, who, when no-one is looking, dons her training shoes and listens to her I-pod. In this story Miss Havisham is acting as mentor to Thursday as she attempts to enter fiction without the Prose Portal. Full of puns, wit, running gags and wonderful imagery, Jasper's Nextian world is somewhere you can happily lose yourself in and it was great too to read about these slightly surreal versions of places that are so familiar to me such as Swindon, South Cerney, Stratton and Cirencester (which is actually where I'm moving to.) It helps to have a good knowledge of literature as there are so many references. I haven't particularly so I probably missed some of the subtleties. But great stuff like petitions for Tess Durbeyfield to be acquitted and Maxim de Winter to be convicted, a character assessment of Mr and Mrs McGregor (Beatrix Potter) and a delicious piece of nonsense concerning Thursdays ancient granny and the ten most boring classics that she has to read before she is allowed to die (only one problem, she doesn't know which they are and so is canvassing opinions.) Thursday engages in some book-jumping and along the way bumps into (amongst others) Marianne Dashwood, the Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen and Miss Havisham of course. If you read 'The Eyre Affair' then you will know that Thursday had to defeat the evil Acheron Hades and in this book his sister Aornis is seeking revenge. Also in the last book Thursday imprisoned Goliath Corporations Jack Schitt in Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven', they want him back and until Thursday can return him they have deleted Thursday's husband Landen from his current timeline, so, for the time being, he lives in her memory only. Reminiscent of the glorious wordplay and humour in Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams books and equally as fantastic.

The God of Small Things

Synopsis: The Asian literary phenomenon of the 90s. More magical than Mistry, more of a rollicking good read than Rushdie, more nerve-tinglingly imagined than Naipaul, here, perhaps, is the greatest Indian novel by a woman. Arundhati Roy has written an astonishingly rich, fertile novel, teeming with life, colour, heart-stopping language, wry comedy and a hint of magical realism. Set against a background of political turbulence in Kerala, Southern India, The God of Small Things tells the story of twins Esthappen and Rahel. Amongst the vats of banana jam and heaps of peppercorns in their grandmother's factory, they try to craft a childhood for themselves amidst what constitutes their family -- their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist and bottom-pincher) and their avowed enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grand-aunt).

Review: I really liked this one, it's full of incredibly dreamy, evocative prose and beautifully crafted. Told mostly from the viewpoint of the 'two egg' twins Esthappen (or Estha as he is mostly called) and Rahel, it tells the tale of the death of their cousin Sophie Mol who is visiting from England .. with her yellow bell bottoms and go-go bag. The narrative jumps back and forward in time a lot, one minute we are with the adult twins in the present and the next they are children again. There are a lot of characters to try and place and remember, it took me a couple of chapters to familiarise myself with them but I was hooked really from page one. Very descriptive and poetic, the author is brilliant at capturing the sights and smells of Kerala. Witty and funny in parts especially the bits about Mammachi's pickle factory and Kochu Maria, the family's 'vinegar-hearted, short-tempered, midget cook,' who is letting the housework go to blazes as she indulges in her addiction to TV. Lots of sadness too, overall the book does have a melancholy feel. Poor little Estha who, after what should have been a lovely trip out to the Abhilash talkies, is sent outside for singing too loudly during 'The Sound of Music' and falls foul of the 'Orangedrink Lemondrink' man, the fear of this man finding him again haunts Estha during his childhood and the incredibly moving tale of Velutha an 'Untouchable' who is suspected of killing Sophie Mol.

Snobs (Audiobook)

Synopsis: Edith Lavery is a woman on the make. The attractive only child of a middle-class accountant, she leaves behind her dull job in a Chelsea estate agents and manages to bag one of the most eligible bachelors of the day - Charles Broughton, heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. But is life amongst the upper echelons of 'good' society all that it seems? Edith soon discovers there's much more to the aristocracy than dancing in Anabel's, shooting small birds and understanding which fork to use at dinner. And then there is Charles's mother, the indomitable Lady Uckfield, or 'Googie' to her friends, who is none too pleased with her son's choice of breeding partner. With twists and turns aplenty, this is a comical tale worthy of a contemporary Jane Austen.

Review: An amusing and witty comedy of manners set in the 1980's. This book tells the tale of Edith Lavery, a beautiful Chelsea Sloane who is looking for Mr Right. In particular she has ambitions to social climb her way into marrying a member of the aristocracy and is looking for a man who can remove her from her dreary life and elevate her to the position of mistress of some great country pile in deepest England. All her aspirations come true when she meets the rather shy and polite Charles Broughton who is heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. Charles seems to like her, he takes her to places she has only ever read about and Edith begins to get a taste of the champagne lifestyle in which she would love to become accustomed. Edith's mother who has always dreamt about her daughter making an advantageous marriage is in seventh heaven and Edith pulls out all the stops to secure him.

Although Charles is an absolute darling in many ways, he is also incredibly dull and then there is his mother 'Googie', a terrific snob who is not best pleased by her son's choice of wife (but who never publicises this with an outward show of hostility.) Much is made about the ridiculous pet names that have stuck with the upper classes since nursery. Charles's parents are 'Googie' and 'Tigger' which of course makes all those that aren't intimate with them snigger (but most of these are happy to start bandying the names about once they become even the slightest bit familiar with the family.) Edith finds that once the honeymoon is over she is thrown into a world of stultifying tedium, and also a world where everyone around her, except Charles, is at pains to point out, in the subtlest yet humiliating ways imaginable, that she does not and will not ever fit in.

It's hard to like Edith. She's too selfish and inconsiderate. She must be a top candidate for the title of 'heroine that no-one but the author will like', in fact she deserves it far more than Jane Austen's Emma. I wasn't keen on the narrator either, an un-named actor friend of Edith's, who seemed pompous and stiff.

Once Edith gains her position in society by marrying Charles she finds she is bored to tears by it and him and is missing the thrills of earlier days when her boyfriends were a lot less noble and a good deal more lusty. When a television company descends on the house to film a drama, Edith is drawn in a classic grass-is-always-greener way to the handsome (the next Simon McCorkindale apparently) actor Simon Russell who is everything that Charles is not.

It's obvious that Julian Fellowes is entirely comfortable in this tweedy aristocratic world of hunting, shooting, charity dinners, alice bands and kedgeree and writes with a great deal of authenticity. All sorts of comparisons to Austen, Waugh, Mitford and Wodehouse are made but I don't think it quite merits it. Whilst it's enjoyable, and there's plenty of delicious social commentary, the characters are not vivid or absurd enough and the wit is just not sharp enough to completely warrant the comparisons.

I think it wasn't helped by the rather stilted narration by Richard Morant. Someone like Stephen Fry would have brought the gossipy style of the novel to life (but then you could probably say that about every audiobook.)

Kafka on the Shore

Synopsis: Kafka on the Shore follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Murakami's novel is at once a classic quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love. Above all it is an entertainment of a very high order.

Review: This is the first book that I've read of Haruki Murakami's and I'm not really sure what to make of it. There's a lot about it that I liked, the way the author mingles the ordinary with the mystical. It reminded me of Neil Gaiman's writing although I thought that the storyline was far more vague and there was less humour. It was very lyrical and poetic and had some great characters and strong imagery. On the downside I did feel like I was in the middle of a fog trying to find my way out to the exit.

Out of the two main storylines I was most drawn to the one about the elderly and simple minded Nakata. Nakata had been quite a clever child until a strange and bizarre incident caused him to lose all of his memory and most of his mental capacity. He has lost the ability to communicate easily with other people but has developed instead a unique talent for conversing with cats and it's a chance meeting with one particular lost cat that sets him off on a road trip of extraordinary adventure. I felt very emotionally attached to Nakata, he was like a very honest and disarming child who just says whatever it is they're thinking without feeling the need to complicate or be evasive.

'Nakata let his body relax, switched off his mind, allowing things to flow through him. This was natural for him, something he'd done ever since he was a child, without a second thought. Before long the borders of his consciousness fluttered around, just like the butterflies. Beyond these borders lay a dark abyss. Occasionally his consciousness would fly over the border and hover over that dizzying black crevasse. But Nakata wasn't afraid of the darkness or how deep it was. And why should he be? That bottomless world of darkness, that weighty silence and chaos, was an old friend, a part of him already. Nakata understood this well. In that world there was no writing, no days of the week, no scary Governor, no opera, no BMWs. No scissors, no tall hats. On the other hand, there was also no delicious eel, no tasty bean-jam buns. Everything is there, but there are no parts. Since there are no parts, there's no need to replace one thing with another. No need to remove anything, or add anything. You don't have to think about difficult things, just let yourself soak it all in. For Nakata, nothing could be better.'

The other storyline about fifteen year old runaway Kafka I was less keen on, I couldn't really warm to him and didn't ever feel I knew him at all. Kafka is running away from his past, in particular his father who has cursed him with some sort of Oedipal prophecy. He would like to find his mother and sister who he has never known. He has an alter ego -'the boy named Crow' - who more often than not provides Kafka with encouragement and words of wisdom.

The writing is very sensual although at times I thought it veered over into the gratuitous and the sex began to sound like the wishful thinking of every teenage boy - maybe it was. It's packed full of metaphor, weird time loops, people that may or may not be what or whom they seem, lots of magical realism with talking cats and skies full of raining mackerel and random philosophical quotations.

The book is full of gorgeous ingredients but when mixed together I'm not sure that they fulfilled their potential. I just didn't get it, that was all. I've had dreams similar to this and they're the type that you wake up sweating and bewildered about. I can still appreciate that it's an incredible piece of surreal writing. I was intrigued by it but ultimately confused. I realise that I probably need to have more ends tied up than this sort of writing is willing to provide which is a bit disappointing.