Eleven Kinds Of Lonliness by Richard Yates

'Cheerful' would be the wrong word to describe this, but then, you probably got that from 'Yates'. He's the Arthur Miller of the novel - profound, enlightening, insightful, addictive and utterly morose.

The most interesting aspect of this book is the way people are lonely without being alone. It's a discussion on the state of loneliness as a function of being misunderstood, or outcast in some way. When you can't see yourself reflected in your community, that's lonely. When you are part in something but not of something, that's lonely. These characters are almost more lonely when they're in company than when they create opportunities to be alone.

Can you be lonely when you're alone? It doesn't feel like it, reading this. In these stories it seems that loneliness is a feeling you can only really have when you're faced with the knowledge that despite being surrounded, you alone will face your past and your future. The act of presence you can enjoy in solitary moments is rarely something you can share.

Another review talks about this quite nicely, too - http://booksauce.wordpress.com/2011/07/14/review-eleven-kinds-of-loneliness/.

There is something incredibly satisfying about a well-crafted short story, and each of these is a delight. The characters, the places and the dialogue is thoroughly enjoyable, so much so, that I've finally picked up The Easter Parade on your recommendation, Nik. Just like the other review above, for me, the last story in the collection felt a little out of keeping with the others. I'm still kind of mulling over whether that one fits in and I certainly didn't enjoy it in the same way. Will report back on the Easter Parade! 

Rites by Sophie Coulombeau

DISCLAIMER - I adore the woman who wrote this book and the night before I started this blog post nearly a year ago, she'd just made me dinner. Also, this book has my name in the back. My copy also has a hand-drawn picture of a dinosaur in the prelim pages.

Here's a book about choices, and circumstance, and opportunity and icy-poles in Summer. The bravery, stupidity and calamity of adolescence where truth and duty begin to fray their edges - it's all here.

The way she writes about everything awkward, awful, harrowing and defining about growing up, you'd think she was the world's most articulate teenager. She might have been, but she's not any more.

I'm not going to say any more than this, except look out for her next one - you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Congratulations Soph.

x

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

This is such a more-ish book. Set in the Congo at the end of the 50s and starring a zealous Baptist missionary couple and there several daughters, this is brilliant.

The daughters and their mother take turns to narrate the story - a style I really enjoy when it's used well, as here. But the voice we never hear - that of their increasingly maniacal father - is omnipresent, dictating, essentially, the trajectory of the entire story.


This is a fascinating look at belonging and community, and destiny, faith and hope. You will love and hate the characters, but you will find your fate entwined with theirs and you will rip through the pages to save yourself.

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Here is a book about identity & friendship. It's wonderfully written & deeply amusing. All friendships instruct you in some way, make you who you are, but also reflect you by your choices. This portrayal of that interplay is truly thrilling.

Enjoy.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Speaking of cracked out, this book is more twisted than your nanna’s back. The chick-lit thriller of the moment, it’s a page-turner that I couldn’t put down (from an unofficial office straw poll of five workmates, they all smashed through it in the same way). It’s tight and more taut than Joan Rivers (alright I’ll stop with the bad analogies now). I can’t write much without giving the game away, but we start off by reading diary entries of the perfect Amy, about to celebrate her five-year anniversary with husband Nick. But the anniversary doesn’t happen when Amy inexplicably goes missing and the investigation turns to Nick. He then gets a turn at narrating, where we hear about his retrenchment from his dream magazine writing gig in New York, and he and Amy’s disappointment at having to move to his pokey home town in Missouri. Kernels of information are laid down by husband and wife, like a Hansel and Gretel trail of breadcrumbs leading to the truth. Of course there’s a humdinger of a plot twist which I won’t give away. It didn’t surprise me to read that it’s been earmarked for a movie adaptation, or that it flew off the shelves when it was released in mid-2012 (2 million copies and counting). It may not be literature but it shows that a good story is worth its weight in gold.

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

This book is seriously cracked out. It starts innocently enough, although with a fairly grim scenario where four strangers in a field bear witness to a tragic hot air balloon accident where a man is killed. The group are now bound by the tragedy, with each man thinking they could have done something more to save him. One of the men, Joe, is a freelance science writer who lives with his girlfriend Clarissa in London. One day soon after the freak incident, one of the other men who was at the scene, Jed, calls him out of the blue, saying all manner of strange things: “I love you”, “I want to be with you” ‘we’re meant to be together”. Leaves dozens of messages on his answering machine. Turns up at his house at night. Watches him from street corners. Makes thinly veiled threats to harm Clarissa so they can be together. Everything bar boiling the bunny or leaving a horse head in the bed. Joe goes to the police who just think he’s making it up, and Clarissa starts questioning his mental state. It’s all the more unsettling for the unusual male-on-male stalker set-up, and for the fact that Joe has done nothing to attract Jed’s infatuation. I felt a bit strange at the end of the book … scratched my head a little, did some laps around the block, had more tea and still undecided on whether or not this was a thumbs up or down. An ambiguous answer for an ambiguous book.

The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman

Another reason to write these STRAIGHT AFTER READING THEM. Or at least make notes. I read this quite some time ago, and remember very much enjoying it, but in keeping with the title, will need to make some sweeping statements about my enjoyment of it. Elilot Perlman has been described as one of the great ‘humanist’ writers of our generation, able to conjure up characters across the spectrum of age, race, gender to explore big themes of loss, memory, grief and redemption. Previous novel Seven Types of Ambiguity was certainly epic in scale but didn’t quite deliver the emotional pay off it promised (and after 800 or so pages, that was quite annoying), and perhaps experience and maturity have helped make this, his third novel, a more complete story. Three men with chequered pasts are our protagonists; an Australian academic based in New York who has recently been dumped and rejected for tenure; an African-American janitor fresh out of jail and searching for his six-year-old estranged daughter; and a Jewish Holocaust survivor whose last wish in life is share what happened in the camps. Like a literary carnival fairy floss spinner, wispy threads of stories are spun and spun until their three stories become one. It feels like a lot of research and a lot of love went into this book, and while there may be some parts that feel a touch laboured, I thought as a whole it was quite moving.