The Sunday Philosophy Club Alexander McCall Smith

This is kind of a spin-off from the 44 Scotland St series, which I really enjoyed. It's very light reading, from a reasonably heavy-weight intellectual. Professor Alexander McCall Smith works in medical and criminal law at the University of Edinburgh, and, somewhere between textbooks, students and awards, writes lovely Scottish fluff such as this and a series about a female private detective in the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Too much time on his hands, me thinks. If I was his work, I'd be keeping a closer on on how he spends his 'hours'...

Anyway, so. On the book: lovely.

Professor McCall Smith uses the vehicle of an older woman of independent means to discuss, in a non-academic forum, some little of life's little, well, brain teasers. Isabel Delhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, her housekeeper Grace, and her niece Cat allow us to ponder questions like 'do you tell when you know someone's partner is cheating?', and 'what does it mean when a young man wears crushed strawberry coloured corduroy trousers?'. Through them we're invited to consider the perspectives of the young & old and the wealthy & the working class, all against a backdrop of Edinburgh and interspersed with conversations about cheese, wine & art. Oh, to be a woman of independent means...

Simply delightful reading on a train North.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

Ahhhh, I love this period of fiction. It's that John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath 1930s & 40s mode of story-telling that gets me every time. The novels of this era, understandably, smack of impotent, latent, restless rage that sits over every thing in them. You feel it in the heat, the hunger, the skinned knees and broken hearts - everyone of which carries the weight of defeat greater than itself.

This particular novel is home to an eclectic grab-bag of characters. John Singer is a deaf mute who works engraving intricate patterns into silver. He is bereft of his best friend, another deaf mute, and left lonely and heartsick in his small town. He becomes the confidant of a host of characters - to the heroine Mick Kelly, the Marxist doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, the alcoholic socialst labourer Jake Blount, and the man in the middle Biff Brannon. None of these characters is resolved to their lot and in this novel we watch them do battle with themselves and each other.

For me, one of the most touching moments in the book involves Mick. The Kelly's are a poor family with not much going for them, but Mick has somehow happened upon a passion for classical music and composes symphonies in her head. In her dusty, stifling, out-of-the-way town, she dreams of playing piano and going abroad. She's playing around in a building site one day and graffitis "Mowtzart" for Mozart on an unfinished wall and at this point it's heartbreaking to think of the distance she'd have to travel to live out her dream. This vignette is emblematic of the gulf between the reality and the dreams of all of these characters.

"Please mind the gap between your aspirations and your observations."

Loved it. Thanks Carson.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Oh Dave. Your fiction befuddles me but your non-fiction talks straight to my heart. After sharing the plight of Sudanese Lost Boy Valentino Achak Deng in his earlier work What is the What, this time around its Abdulrahman Zeitoun’s turn. A Syrian Muslim who lives in New Orleans with his American-born Muslim wife Kathy and their kids, he gets caught up in the storm of disorganization and government fallibility in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

I’m not going to give too much away, but even writing about it now makes my blood boil at the complete ineptitude and cowboy ways of the Bush administration. More about guns and force than compassion and common sense, they made a complete cock-up of the humanitarian effort so sorely needed after the natural disaster and through the plight of this one man, shows how afraid, paranoid and stupid the whole country’s law enforcement and government agencies had become in the wake of September 11.

Read this and weep.

A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger

It’s quite funny to look at incidents from your childhood and see how they have subconsciously affected what you become or how you act as an adult (change the word ‘funny’ for ‘sad’ or ‘weird’ depending on said childhood). The cover of this book shows Junger as a baby, being held by his mum, as Al DeSalvo, a man who worked as a labourer on their house, stands behind them. Just a few short years after this picture was taken, DeSalvo was later found to be the infamous Boston Strangler and decades on, Junger is an acclaimed journalist, lauded especially for his work in war-torn Afghanistan and reporting on corruption in Africa.

This book is his retracing of the events of that year in his hometown of Belmont, as DeSalvo waged a terrifying war on the women of Boston. But it’s more than just your every day crime biography, looking at the black men who were incarcerated for DeSalvo’s crimes and the blatant racism and police force errors that led him to staying on the loose.

Junger’s eye for detail, and obvious meticulous research, feeds this book, which feels like an extended newspaper profile. It keeps the pace and keeps you reading, so much so that I devoured it in the space of two nights (take that, Toltz). A disturbing look into dark suburban Americana.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz

Urrrrgh. I blame this book for the blogging malaise of late. I started this book in mid-June and gave up, halfway through, about six weeks later. I JUST DID NOT CARE. And by halfway, I mean I read 300 pages and still did not persevere. I can’t quite put my finger on why I was so disinterested. Am putting this in the You Win Some, You Lose Some book basket.

The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey

You couldn't argue that it's a catchy title, that's for darn sure. I know you didn't get much out of Oscar & Lucinda, Nik, and this wasn't my favourite Carey (I think that gong goes to My Life as a Fake), but it was a pretty amazing novel for a couple of reasons:

1. It's set in a car yard
2. One main character is a pregnant tax inspector, the other is a frustrated wannabe teenage car salesman
3. It made me homesick with a reference to Dandenong (however, I was listening to Paul Kelly at the time and I do not have a heart of steel)

The characters are so unnerving, and the setting so vile, that it's hard to know how to feel about them from page to page. This novel is about defining your relationship with change and decay - do you cede to it, embrace it, reverse it, create it, wallow in it, become one with it, or rise above it? It's about the country being swallowed by the city, it's about the past being lost to the present. It's about honour.

It's a quick read, which will, somehow, make you long for the smell of rain on cement, the sight of a pile of tyres, the sound of a big chicken wire gate scraping across a driveway, and taste of a burnout in your mouth.

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

There are authors whose name you hear enough times that you think, 'I must've read something by X, surely?!', but then you're forced to conceded that in fact, you've done no such thing. Sebastian Faulks is a perfect example of this for me. It's weird - he hasn't won loads of awards or anything, but there was a period early on when I was in London that his name was just everywhere. I guess it's not about winning awards, it's about having a marketing team who get your name on everyone's lips. And to that end, well done Sebastian Faulks' publishers.

Not that this is undeserved, however. Birdsong is a very well-crafted novel with round, whole characters and an unfaltering sense of place. It's ambitious, but successful in its breadth - there is an intelligent conversation in this work about violence, betrayal, loyalty and love. Each of these is laid before you both on the scale of the individual and the global, and it's curious to see that they are both equally devastating.

This is a very moving saga/drama/war bonanza and I highly recommend it.