The Privileges by Jonathan Dee

This is totally my version of trash – well-written, interesting characters, snappy dialogue, wealthy New York backdrop that you chow through in a few days without any sense of mental indigestion after snapping it shut and promptly forgetting about it. (In fact, the ending of this book made no sense at all, and was quite disappointing. But I will forgive Dee as the beginning and middle were more than satisfactory).

Centred around an annoyingly self-assured and charmed couple, Adam and Cynthia, The Privileges follows them as they rise through the elite ranks of New York society. Adam is a hedge fund manager turned criminal inside trader; Cynthia seems happy to just bathe in the light seemingly shining out of her husband’s arse. She also seems mildly insane; functioning but likely to snap at any time.

Two diametrically opposite kids (one a spoilt drug-taking princess with zero direction and the other an art school attendee trying to hide his family’s immense wealth) round out this insular quartet. Adam and Cynthia apparently run off their limitless love for each other – her reaction when he tells her that he has been scamming money for the better part of the decade is met with adoration (“you did this all for us!”) rather than anger or fear. They just believe in the power of each other, to the point of freezing out all others. It’s like they're The Untouchables.

That’s what I found kind of charming about this book – that the actions of many characters were unexpected, and almost the opposite of a normal reaction. No-one is caught, no-one is redeemed, wealth, ego and self-fullfillment are applauded. A nice change from the uber earnest Eat Pray Love set.

Never let me go by Kazou Ishiguro

I have a book dealer at work – a very switched on gal that orders 30 books on Book Depository before going on holiday, and gets through them all. She’s been giving me the good stuff for some time now; she knows my taste quite well and I trust her literary judgment. Like a good dealer, she is reliable and trustworthy.

So when she handed me this book with a reverent look in her eye, I took it to be a good sign. This book was going to be AWESOME.

But it was not to be for this little black duck. I had read Ishiguro’s When we were orphans when I was at uni, and remember being completely underwhelmed, but I swept these reservations to the side, thinking that perhaps age and maturity would allow me to read his works in a different light. Also since then I have discovered the zany, eccentric joys of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (the most excellent The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - remember reading this in Argentina?) so I thought I'd see if this Asian bro came up with the goods.

The blurb describes the mood of this book as ‘disquieting’ and that is certainly true. There’s this weird creepiness, and you know something odd is up, but the author never gives much away…very much of the ‘I’m going to start telling you some of this story, but the rest is for another time’ school of suspense. Which works – to a point. It’s such a slow reveal that I found by the end, I was waiting for something so much bigger, that I felt a bit cheated.

And maybe that says something about the way I view things, because the whole plot revolves around this one large ethical dilemma (I won’t give it away if you haven’t read it) that I didn’t find all that alarming or revolting. There just wasn’t enough context, or enough of the emotional side of the main characters, for me to feel they were losing out all that much.

Or maybe I’m just a cold-hearted wench…

Northanger Abbey Jane Austen

Jane,

Not your finest work. Few characters, little intrigue, poor attempts at Gothic parody, and a general lack of wit and insight. I know it was one of your early works, but still.

Frankly, it's no wonder the blokes who bought it off you for a tenner in 1803, decided not to print it, and sold it back to your brother for a tenner in 1817. I guess the upshot of this is that it was never in print while you were alive. This begs the question though, whether your bro was just profiteering when he had it publishing posthumously?

C -